Stalemate in Gaza

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 10 November 2026

           More than a year after the Hamas-Israel ceasefire, Gaza is in a state of suspended animation.

​ According to the Trump peace plan, Hamas should by now be well advanced towards demilitarization and relinquishing its role in Gaza’s governance. Yet the process remains stalled, and Hamas retains both its weapons and control of up to 35% of the territory, principally in western Gaza and the central and southern coastal belt.  Most of Gaza’s population is concentrated in this area, which includes Gaza City, Deir al-Balah and parts of the Khan Younis coastal region.

However, Hamas’s authority is neither uniform nor uncontested.  ​Other militias​, such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)​​, are still active, ​and while Hamas retains armed networks and influence in parts of the populated area, its ability to govern and operate is constrained by ​the IDF.

In its effort to inhibit further Hamas aggression, Israel exercises military control over roughly two-thirds of the Gaza Strip.  Its boundary is marked by what is known as the Yellow Line. Originally established as the position to which Israeli forces were to withdraw under the October 2025 ceasefire, the line is marked in some locations by concrete blocks painted yellow, placed about 200 meters apart.​  

Although not precisely ​delineated, ​the Yellow Line effectively separates the area under Israeli military control from the areas where Palestinians are living.​  Its future significance depends on whether it turns out to be a temporary military demarcation​ or a ​de facto border.

​Reports from UN​ agencies describe continuing violence, ​the failure of Hamas and other militias to disarm​, and ​a shortage of essential equipment and supplies.  ​A ​full account by Reuters on October 6​, confirmed by a report on November 7,  found that Hamas disarmament, Israeli withdrawal, and reconstruction had largely stalled.

So although a framework exists, and some of its first-phase objectives were achieved, the transition to a stable political and security order has not yet materialized. The main issues that would create a lasting settlement remain unresolved.

Meanwhile on October 10 the Jerusalem Post reported a senior Israeli official claiming growing tensions between ​the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip, where its affairs are run by Ali al-Amoudi, and its leadership abroad, headed by Khalil al-Hayya.

The report did not specify ​what the competing positions​ were, but the official said Israeli intelligence had identified ​signs of Hamas attempting to rebuild its military capabilities​.  There were indications that it was planning to confront IDF troops along the Yellow Line​, but also the​ anti-Hamas militias and armed clans of which, according to recent research, there are at least five operating in Israeli-controlled parts of Gaza.

"Hamas is supposed to hand over its weapons,” said the official. “I don't see that happening. And there is no intention to do so."

If the impasse continues, the present unsatisfactory situation ​could become permanent.  Israel would continue to control most of the territory, Hamas would retain a residual armed and political presence in parts of the remaining inhabited area, and civilians would remain displaced and dependent on humanitarian aid.

That outcome would amount to ​a victory for neither​ Hamas nor Israel; neither side ​would have achieve​d its stated objectives​, and civilians ​would continue to bear the heaviest cost.  “Ceasefire” would become a permanent label for a​n unresolved conflict.

A comprehensive plan to stabilize Gaza, address the devastation caused by the war and begin the enormous task of reconstruction has been endorsed in principle by all the parties, including Hamas.  The problem is that implementation has stalled on some of its most difficult provisions.

The proposed path forward was to maintain the ceasefire – now increasingly fragile – and establish a Palestinian civilian administration.  Hamas would be disempowered as the governing authority, and a ​proposed technocratic Palestinian committee, operating under international oversight, would take responsibility for public services and civilian governance. That transition is still only in the early stages of implementation, and in July Hamas announced the dissolution of its own governing body to make way for it – a move Israel dismissed as a stunt. But the committee remains in Cairo, and has yet to enter Gaza and take up its responsibilities.

The plan also envisaged the disarmament of Hamas, and this has proved one of the major sticking points. In July Hamas formally accepted a roadmap setting out a phased process, but Israel rejected its sequencing, insisting that disarmament must precede its full military withdrawal.  Hamas demands Israeli withdrawal and progress towards reconstruction before it surrenders its weapons. Disagreements also remain over the form and supervision of any weapons handover.

 Under the plan an International Stabilization Force (ISF) would be established to oversee aspects of disarmament and facilitate the transition. Several countries have committed troops, but the force has not become operational as envisaged, and has yet to deploy on the ground.

Further Israeli military withdrawal and substantial reconstruction are intended to follow progress on security and governance. Neither has advanced significantly and Gaza remains caught in a precarious stalemate.  The framework for a transition exists, but the political agreement and practical arrangements needed to implement it remain elusive.  The deadlock following Israel's general election makes an early breakthrough even less likely.

Three developments could lift Gaza out of its prolonged stalemate.

A copper-bottomed and enforceable security agreement, if it could be negotiated, would serve the interests not only of Israel, but of the Palestinians. Israel needs credible guarantees against further attacks by Hamas; Palestinians need protection from Israel’s necessary operations against Hamas, and a credible prospect of an end to indefinite displacement.  That must involve the genuine disarmament of Hamas.

In addition Hamas must be removed from governance, and a viable Palestinian alternative established.  

Finally, to be resolved the Gaza situation requires sustained international pressure and practical assistance. The US, Arab states and other international actors would need to coordinate security guarantees, humanitarian access, reconstruction funding and the political transition.

There is an old adage: “Man proposes; God disposes.”  On this occasion Gaza, its people and the world need the two to work hand in hand.

The trials of Netanyahu

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 3 November 2026

          For years a heavy weight of personal pressure has been bearing down on Benjamin Netanyahu.  In the bargaining over Israel’s next government that burden could pull him in opposite directions​. ​ To guarantee a return to office he needs the support of at least eight opposition MKs.  Were he able to obtain it - and it is a long shot - there would be a high political price​ to pay. ​ Or, if a credible settlement of his domestic legal troubles could be arranged, ​his agreed departure ​from the political scene might become the more attractive option.

Ever since 2020 ​Netanyahu has been standing trial on corruption charges in Israel.  In 2024 the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against him over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.  His government’s conduct of the Israel-Hamas war is also the subject of South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) — albeit a case against the state, not Netanyahu personally.  Now he faces a second criminal trial, mounted against him in Turkey, over Israel’s interception of the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla.

            On October 23, 2026, a High Criminal Court in Istanbul held its first substantive hearing in proceedings against Netanyahu and 34 other named Israelis including Israel Katz and Itamar Ben-Gvir, ministers in the last government, and IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir. None of them was present, and the trial proceeded with the defendants in absentia.

The court delivered no verdict.  It extended the arrest warrants, ordered further investigations and adjourned until March 30, 2027. That is the date of the next hearing, not a date for judgment to be delivered.

The Global Sumud Flotilla brought together more than 40 civilian boats carrying some supplies and several hundred participants, including parliamentarians and Greta Thunberg. Around 20 boats left Barcelona on September 1. Other contingents joined from Italian, Tunisian and Greek ports.

Claims made subsequently that the flotilla was bringing much needed food and humanitarian aid to a starving Gaza are misleading.  Associated Press described the aid carried by the flotilla as a “symbolic amount”.  Its main purpose was to challenge Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza.  

Israeli forces began intercepting the vessels on October 1, 2025, some 70 nautical miles from Gaza, in international waters.  Israel said the boats were approaching an active combat zone and attempting to breach a lawful naval blockade. Participants were taken to Israel, including the port of Ashdod, for detention and deportation.

The organizers called the interceptions unlawful.  Subsequently participants alleged they were subjected to violence, degrading detention conditions, confiscation of belongings and other mistreatment. These allegations form a central part of the Turkish court proceedings, which address not only the alleged treatment of participants but the legality of Israel’s interception.

It was on October 2, 2025 that the Istanbul prosecutor opened the investigation.  According to the European Association of Lawyers for Democracy and World Human Rights (ELDH), which sent observers to the hearing, the proceedings involve more than 100 complainants from 28 countries.

The jurisdictional basis cited is Article 13 of the Turkish Penal Code, which provides jurisdiction over specified offences committed abroad.

Reported charges include torture, unlawful deprivation of liberty, intentional injury, aggravated robbery and seizure of vessels or transport. Several reports also list genocide and crimes against humanity among the charges levied against Netanyahu and the other defendants, but the court’s first-hearing decisions reveal a complicated position.

The judges said that while the existing indictment mainly specified acts against the flotilla, investigations into genocide and crimes against humanity could also proceed upon a request from Turkey’s justice minister.  A further indictment based on these charges would need to identify particular incidents and provide supporting evidence.

The court has published no timetable for a final judgment. The next scheduled hearing is March 30, 2027.  The Turkish news outlet, Haberler, reports prosecution demands for aggravated life imprisonment and prison terms reaching 4,596 years, but the most likely near-term outcome is further hearings, evidence gathering and possibly an expanded indictment.

The final outcome might possibly parallel the conclusion of the drawn-out Mavi Marmara affair, which took six long years to resolve.  

On May 31, 2010, Israeli commandos intercepted a Gaza-bound flotilla in international waters. Nine activists aboard the Mavi Marmara were killed​, eight of them Turkish nationals. ​A tenth​ who died ​later of his injuries​ was also Turkish.

On September 2, 2011, Turkey downgraded diplomatic relations with Israel, expelled its ambassador and suspending military agreements. Four former Israeli commandos were tried by a Turkish court in absentia. 

Six years after the raid, in June 2016, Turkey and Israel reached a reconciliation agreement.  Israel agreed to pay $20 million in compensation to the bereaved families; Turkey agreed to end related legal claims. The case against the Israelis was dismissed on December 9, 2016, and Israel-Turkey diplomatic ties were restored.

What are the legal challenges Netanyahu currently faces?

The domestic proceedings against him, alleging fraud, breach-of-trust and bribery, now combines three cases within the one trial.  He denies wrongdoing; and the trial proceeds.

The Turkish criminal trial charges Netanyahu and 34 other Israeli defendants over intercepting the Gaza-bound flotilla, and accuses them, among other matters, of torture, and unlawful deprivation of liberty. Further charges of genocide and crimes against humanity remain possible.

The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including starvation as a method of warfare. The warrant seeks Netanyahu’s arrest and surrender to the ICC in The Hague.  States party to the Rome Statute are obligated to  arrest him if he comes within their jurisdiction and transfer him to the Court.

          Meanwhile, and perhaps for years to come, the ICJ investigation into South Africa’s accusation of genocide remains open. Netanyahu may find a crumb of comfort in the fact that its case is against Israel as a state, not him personally.  

Further legal jeopardy may yet emerge from investigations into his inner circle, while on October 18, bereaved families filed a complaint asking authorities to investigate whether he deliberately misled the state comptroller and the public in his written account of the circumstances surrounding Hamas’s bloodthirsty incursion on October 7.

Unfortunately for Netanyahu, he may yet sink even deeper into the legal morass in which he finds himself.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "The trials of Netanyahu: Turkey, the Global Sumud Flotilla, and what comes next", 3 November 2026:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-913571

Published in Eurasia Review, 6 November 2026:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/06112026-the-trials-of-netanyahu-oped/

 

Israel’s public diplomacy

 Published in the Jerusalem Post , 27 October 2026

           On Sunday, July 12, a debate took place in the Knesset on a subject Israel’s parliament rarely discusses: the work of the National Public Diplomacy Directorate — in other words, Israel’s hasbara.

           The Knesset’s own account of the debate conceded that it was occurring “after years of instability”. That was the least of the fundamental, indeed institutional, problems revealed.

          Eden Bar Tal, director-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, openly admitted to the committee that, until the end of 2024, public diplomacy had scarcely featured in the ministry’s mission. Its concerns had historically been “almost solely diplomatic”.

          Only from the end of 2025, in accordance with a permanent government resolution, did communications and public diplomacy acquire priority. “Public diplomacy,” Bar Tal declared, “is now the main role of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

          The change in government policy was backed by a dramatic budget increase. “In previous years,” Bar Tal revealed, “public diplomacy activity amounted to 25​-​to-27 million ​shekels per year for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs throughout the world. In effect, it was zero resources. Today, the budget that was set amounts to about 1.2 billion.”

          This extraordinary turnaround is almost certainly due to the appointment in April, shortly after completing her five-year term as Israel’s ambassador to the UK, of Tzipi Hotovely as Head of Israel's National Public Diplomacy Directorate. In the few months she has held office, she has been heavily involved in rebuilding the organization she inherited, as well as actively mounting two vitally important promotional campaigns.

          She told the Knesset committee that on taking up her post she had discovered substantial organizational problems. “I want to say directly and candidly,” she said, “that I discovered great difficulties, but we are rebuilding the directorate."

          However merely reconstructing the directorate that Hotovely now heads – essential as that is – may not, in itself, create the well-functioning and effective national hasbara operation the nation desperately requires. It is the overall organizational set-up that seems problematic.

          For example, two distinct bodies within the Israeli administration are rendered in English as “Public Diplomacy Directorate.” The National Public Diplomacy Directorate, headed by Tzipi Hotovely, sits in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). Its name in Hebrew includes hasbara. The Foreign Ministry’s Public Diplomacy Department is a separate unit within that ministry. The word “National” is attached only to Hotovely’s unit.

          Her organization is charged with setting and coordinating public diplomacy policy right across government, including the Foreign Ministry, the IDF, the intelligence agencies, the police, and the Government Press Office.

          The Foreign Ministry, on the other hand, operating its own Public Diplomacy Department, conducts Israel’s diplomacy abroad, supporting Israeli embassies, managing media relations and digital outreach, and promoting cultural and scientific cooperation, and relations with Jewish communities. Moreover, as Bar Tal informed the Knesset committee, it is the Foreign Ministry that administers the principal public diplomacy budget.

          Since the two bodies operate in the same broad policy field, questions must arise about the boundaries between their respective responsibilities.

          How is this arrangement, that looks like a recipe for operational confusion and inter-departmental rivalry, meant to operate?

          The current relationship is best described as coordination rather than command. Hotovely’s National Directorate is a senior level coordinating body operating from within the PMO, while the Foreign Ministry is both a participant in that coordination and an implementing ministry with its own overseas public diplomacy apparatus.

          In practice the National Directorate convenes a national public diplomacy forum bringing together representatives from across government. The Foreign Ministry’s Public Diplomacy Department then translates policy into work carried out through embassies and consulates, such as press engagement, digital diplomacy, branding, briefings, cultural and scientific diplomacy, and responses to hostile narratives such as BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaigns.

          The arrangement is not necessarily dysfunctional, since national coordination and diplomatic implementation can be complementary functions. But the arrangement strikes an outside observer as fragmented and lacking a clear management structure. Is this division of labor supported by sufficiently clear lines of authority​? If not, there is the risk of duplication, competing priorities and uncertainty over accountability.

          In “rebuilding” her directorate, Hotovely will certainly have in mind the potential problems posed by the current set-up.

          Meanwhile she has not allowed the grass to grow under her feet. In September she mounted a major publicity campaign in New York ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the UN General Assembly. Around 500 billboards and dozens of trucks with digital screens were deployed, alongside online promotion. The messaging focused on Iran's security threat, the US–Israel partnership, and the argument that Israel and the US were defending the free world.

          In October Hotovely was heavily engaged in promoting a film that countered the anti-Israel messages in the film “NAZA”, which claimed that the collateral death toll in the Israel-Hamas war was deliberate and institutionalized Israeli military policy. The film won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.

          Hotovely presented certificates of appreciation to the creators of “NAZA – The Real Story”, a film featuring Israeli military personnel's testimony, and intended to rebut accusations concerning the Israeli military's conduct in Gaza.

          The film was available free online, and on October 14 the Algemeiner reported “it has already been viewed more than 43 million times, according to the site.”

          Eylon Levy, a former spokesperson in the National Public Diplomacy Directorate, spoke to the Knesset committee in July.

            “Regrettably,” he said, “in the past few years our enemies have been playing on an empty field. The most prestigious organizations around the world are waging a delegitimization campaign against us, aimed at persuading normative people that we deserve to be destroyed, but we aren't returning fire.”

          Hotovely is supremely well qualified for the job she has taken on. Her career has combined domestic Israeli politics, diplomacy, and public advocacy abroad, and the Israeli cabinet unanimously approved her appointment. If anyone can construct the effective hasbara operation that Israel so desperately needs, it is Tzipi Hotovely.

          Whatever the political hue of the government that emerges as a result of this week’s election, the nation would be well served if she remains in post.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Israel’s 'hasbara' overhaul raises questions over who is in charge", 26 October 2026:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-912859

Published in Eurasia Review, 2 November 2026:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/31102026-israels-public-diplomacy-oped/

Operation “Dawn of Yemen”

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 20 October 2026

Early in September the Houthis launched a rapid and unexpected offensive along Yemen’s Red Sea coast. They captured the strategically important port of Mocha and pushed south towards the Bab al-Mandeb strait, gaining roughly 150km of coastline and threatening the southern entrance to the Red Sea.

The offensive turned Bab al-Mandeb into a second maritime pressure point in Iran’s conflict with the United States. Before it, American naval and military resources could concentrate on the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s principal economic lever. The Houthi advance put the Red Sea route into play as well, giving Iran potential leverage over both of the region’s main oil-shipping corridors.

Oil prices are determined at the margin, so even when actual lost production is relatively small, the mere threat of disruption can produce a large price increase. That is exactly what happened in September.  Brent crude, the principal international benchmark price for crude oil, had averaged about $89 per barrel for most of 2026.  After the seizure of Mocha, despite there not yet being an equivalent actual loss of global oil production, it went above $110.  It now sits just below $110..

         ​   The Houthi assault was too vitally significant to go unanswered.  On October 4, the internationally recognized Yemeni government, backed by Saudi Arabia, launched a major counter-offensive.  With substantial Saudi air and naval support, government forces attacked the areas recently gained by the Houthis.​  

In its public statements the Yemeni government has emphasized that its long-term aim is national reunification. 

​Accordingly when Rashad al-Alimi, president of Yemen’s​ Presidential Leadership Council (PLC)​ ​announced the ​operation on October 5, ​he described it as an effort to restore state institutions, retake Sana’a, and defeat the Houthi movement. ​ Probably more in hope than expectation, he dubbed it "Operation Dawn of Yemen".

​         Reuters suggests that Saudi Arabia’s more immediate strategic requirement is to recover the Bab al-Mandeb area and remove the leverage the Houthis acquired in September.

         Former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Michael Ratney, put that narrower objective succinctly: “Ideally, it would be a fairly limited operation to retake coastal areas and get back to normal maritime traffic.”

The coalition’s military effort is considerable.  Its spokesman, Major General Turki al-Maliki, said that 100 fighter aircraft participated in the opening phase, and that 324 “high-value targets” had been destroyed. The coalition also announced round-the-clock support for Yemeni ground forces and air cover over Bab al-Mandeb, while naval operations have extended north to Hodeidah governorate. The coalition says it struck weapons depots and facilities storing explosive-laden boats and naval mines, and thwarted a planned attack on southern Red Sea waterways.   

          Who are these Houthis, who call their movement Ansar Allah and are perhaps the most blatantly antisemitic of all jihadist groups?  They brandish a flag inscribed with the words: “A curse on the Jews”, in addition to such slogans as “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”

They emerged in the late 1980s from within Yemen’s Zaydi ​Shiite communities in the northern Saada region. The current conflicted state stems back to the sadly misnamed “Arab spring” uprisings of 2011. Inside Yemen they resulted in mass protests against the long dictatorial rule of its president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. 

​Saleh was forced to step down in favor of his vice-president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.  In 2015 Hadi tried to sponsor a revised constitution for Yemen that envisaged a federal system split between northerners and southerners. The Iran-backed Houthi rebels rejected it.

Although the Houthis are fundamentalist Shi​ites, Yemen’s ex-president Saleh, a Sunni Muslim, decided to collaborate with them in a bid to return to power.

It was through Saleh that the Houthis were able to gain control of most of the Yemeni military, including its air force. As a result, and supported with military hardware from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, they overran large tracts of the country, and in September 2014 captured Yemen’s capital city, Sanaa.

Subsequently they expanded their control across much of north-western Yemen.

            Saudi Arabia, alarmed at the prospect of Iran gaining a foothold on the Arabian peninsula, formed a coalition to support Hadi’s government, and intervened in March 2015 to beat back the Houthis. The internal struggle for power has continued ever since, and despite years of coalition air operations and ground fighting, the Houthis have retained their north-western power base.

A UN-brokered truce in April 2022 substantially reduced fighting.  Although it formally expired in October that year, the UN acknowledges that relative restraint ha​d continued until the present escalation.           

The Houthis’ conflict with Saudi Arabia has been both religious and political.  Zaydis opposed the spread of Saudis’ Sunni Wahhabi influence on religious grounds.  ​It was the Saudis’ political and military influence in Yemen ​that ​the Houthis resisted​.

​From 2022 Riyadh cut back substantially on its own military activity, attempt​ing a policy of support for the PLC by way of diplomacy​. Even so, it continued to fund and arm anti-Houthi forces.  ​​In the past year it ​has increasingly reasserted direct military involvement, ​culminating in its current support for ​the offensive against the Houthis.

Although the ground fighting is being conducted primarily by Saudi-backed Yemeni forces rather than Saudi troops, the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), has been a significant driver of the counter-offensive.

Following the Houthi advance toward Mocha and Bab al-Mandab in September, he personally pressed US President Donald Trump to strike them. Trump declined direct US participation, but Washington subsequently provided intelligence and targeting support.

MBS's likely strategic objectives are to restore the Red Sea security buffer by pushing the Houthis away from Bab al-Mandab and the Saudi-facing Red Sea coast.  He is probably not at one with the ​PLC ​in see​ing the conflict as another attempt to win the Yemeni civil war.

The rapid Houthi gains were a serious setback to the Saudi-backed Yemeni order. Reversing them, even partially, demonstrates that Saudi Arabia can still defend the security of its southern frontier.  

MBS's immediate strategic calculation is probably to deny the Houthis​ —​ and by extension Iran​ —​ a durable position at Bab al-Mandab, protect Saudi maritime and energy interests, restore Saudi leverage, and enter any eventual negotiation from a position​ of strength, backed now by the offer of Egyptian support.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Saudi Arabia’s offensive against the Houthis aims to secure Bab el-Mandeb", 20 October 2026:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-912142

Published in Eurasia Review, 2 November 2026:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/24102026-operation-dawn-of-yemen-oped/

 

Britain’s breach with Israel

Published in the new issue of the Jerusalem Report, dated 26 October 2026

            On October 1 the UK’s Daily Telegraph quoted a senior Israeli official accusing the British government of being “hell-bent on destroying a relationship that has saved countless British lives.”

Strong language.  What sequence of events could have led him to this conclusion?

Early in September Israeli intelligence warned MI5, Britain’s secret service, that an Iranian-backed attack was imminent on an air base in England used by the US Air Force.  The very next day Ed Miliband, the UK foreign secretary, announced plans to ban the import of goods from Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

   In the early hours of September 27, armed police intercepted three suspicious vans near RAF Fairford in England.  Fairford is an airbase used by the US Air Force.  Five British men in their twenties were arrested.  The men were later released on bail while the investigation continued.  Former counter-terrorism police officers have since speculated that the incident was a “hostile reconnaissance operation”, intended as a “dry-run” for a more sinister attack.

Britain’s prime minister, Andy Burnham, said there were “strong indications” that Iran had played a part in the suspected plot, and on October 1 police arrested a 27-year-old British-Iranian on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts. He too was later released on bail, and the investigation continues.

That same day, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was interviewed on Fox News.

“Do you want to hear how absurd things are there?” he said, referring to Britain. “And how far the anti-Israeli propaganda has gone?  We gave the Brits the intel, that there was going to be an attack, and it’s an Iranian-sponsored attack, and pretty much the next day they slap sanctions on us. It’s wild, the caving in. The collapse before the Islamist-Marxist alliance is very dangerous for the future of the West.”

            Netanyahu is, of course, in the run-up to a vital general election.  His political future is at stake.  He needs to project as strong and positive an image as possible.  Opposing Britain’s tougher pro-Palestinian approach gives him that opportunity.

The political situation in the UK is similarly abnormal.  Andy Burnham has been the UK’s prime minister only since July.  He was shoe-horned into office following the resignation of Sir Keir Starmer, so he has no direct mandate from the electorate.  As a new broom, he needed to gain the strong support of the Labour majority in the House of Commons.  One certain way was to announce an even more stringent pro-Palestinian policy than his hapless predecessor, who had gone so far as to recognize the non-existent state of Palestine.

            So it was that on September 8 Britain’s foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, came to the Commons to announce a “reset in our relations with Israel“, including a sweeping new sanctions regime targeting Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

This new deterioration in UK-Israeli relations stems back to October 7, 2023.          

When details of Hamas’s attack on Israel first emerged, Starmer, then leader of the opposition Labour party, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with then-UK prime minister Rishi Sunak, then-US president Joe Biden, and most Western political leaders, in proclaiming Israel’s right to defend itself. 

Unfortunately for Starmer, his moral stance was not acceptable to two entities he faced on his own political terrain.  One was the powerful hard-left element within his party; the other the strong Muslim presence in some Labour-held constituencies.

Britain’s general election in July 2024 resulted in a massive win for the Labour party.  Starmer came to power with a huge majority.  But the activities of a brand new organization calling itself The Muslim Vote cost the Labour party five seats, slashed Labour majorities in a fair number of other constituencies, and placed a caucus of rabidly anti-Israel MPs in the House of Commons.  

Traditionally, general elections in Britain turn on domestic issues.  This time though, for one bloc of ethnic minority voters a foreign war taking place 3000 miles away was more important than all the usual domestic concerns.  Any support for Israel, justified or not, is anathema to pro-Palestinian activists.   The Muslim Vote was an alliance of 23 such organisations.  Its purpose was to unseat those MPs deemed insufficiently hostile to Israel, particularly Labour party members.  

They succeeded beyond their expectations.  Once voted into parliament, the five candidates who beat their Labour opponents formed themselves into a new pro-Palestinian bloc – the Independent Alliance – headed by Jeremy Corbyn, one-time leader of the Labour party.   

Their success shook Starmer, despite his huge majority.  When in November 2024 the International Criminal Court (ICC), alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity, issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and cabinet minister Yoav Gallant, Starmer declared that the UK “respects the independence of the ICC”, and indicated that Israel’s prime minister would face arrest if he entered Britain.

A new political factor came into play in September 2025 when Zack Polanski, a charismatic young politician, won the leadership of the Green Party. 

        He rapidly repositioned the party as a much more assertive, left-wing national force. In a February by-election the Greens took a parliamentary seat from Labour, and in May won the mayoralty of the London borough of Hackney.

These successes precipitated the eventual removal of Keir Starmer as prime minister. Polanski then decided to contest Starmer’s vacated parliamentary seat, but in the by-election on October 8 he was beaten by the Labour party candidate. 

His defeat has been ascribed in no small measure to the furore created within the party and the media by the motion debated at the Green party conference on October 4 that defined Zionism as racism, advocating a single Palestinian state.  It passed, with 55.7% of those voting in favour, and is now party policy. 

Israel’s instant response was to ban Polanski from entering the country.

Although Burnham has called the Green party motion "completely wrong", his government gains domestic credit by maintaining an uncompromising stand over settlements.  Meanwhile Netanyahu gains domestic credit by depicting Britain as an unreliable ally.

An uneasy compromise has been reached over the closure – or rather the renaming – of Britain’s consulate in east Jerusalem, but the danger is that the spat could evolve into a mutually reinforcing cycle.  

The forthcoming Israeli elections may lead to a resolution.

Published by the Jerusalem Post online titled "Israel's intel protects Britain; Britain's politics punish Israel", 13 October 2026:

https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/article-911506

Published by Eurasia Review, 14 October 2026:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/14102026-britains-breach-with-israel-oped/

A terror-free Turkey?

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 13 October 2026

On August 10, 2026, the Turkish parliament passed, by 467 votes in the 600-seat legislature, a law putting into effect what Ankara calls the “Terror-Free Turkey” process – a euphemism for the disbandment and disarmament of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The PKK is designated a terrorist organization not only by the Turkish government, but by the US and the EU.

The overwhelming majority by which the law passed was made possible because it was supported not only by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AK party and its political allies, but also, perhaps surprisingly, by that long-time thorn in Erdogan’s flesh, the pro-Kurdish DEM Party.  That unusual accord between long-time political opponents sealed a compromise that had been decades in the making:  the dissolution of the PKK in exchange for unprecedented leniency for its former members.

The new law provides a mechanism for suspending certain prosecutions relating to PKK offences, and for deferring the execution of some prison sentences. Most important, it establishes a framework intended to facilitate the reintegration of eligible former PKK members into civilian life.  The Associated Press reported that the measure could potentially affect approximately 4,000 PKK members not directly involved in violent crimes.  

The new law becomes operative only after Turkish security authorities have determined that the PKK and affiliated structures have indeed ended their armed existence and surrendered the weapons and ammunition under their control.  This must then be confirmed by the National Security Council and published in the Official Gazette.

These requirements are not as oppressive as may first appear.  The ground has been well prepared, and the PKK is ready and willing to comply.

The Kurds are an ethnic group of some 30-40 million people.  They inhabit a contiguous mountainous area divided between Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria.  Most live in Turkey, where they constitute roughly one-fifth of the population.

          For decades Erdogan, together with many in the Turkish establishment, believed that granting their Kurdish citizens political autonomy could weaken the unity of the state.  Some feared it would be a first step toward an independent sovereign Kurdish state, particularly after the constitutional recognition of the autonomous Kurdistan administration in northern Iraq in 2005.

These fears were compounded during the Syrian civil war, starting in 2011.  Kurdish forces established autonomous institutions in northern Syria, creating the possibility of a Kurdish-controlled zone along much of Turkey’s southern border.  Links between the Kurdish forces in Syria and the PKK were perceived by Erdogan as a security threat.

He had already authorized military operations against PKK bases in northern Iraq.  Turkish aircraft struck them in late 2007, and this was followed by a major ground offensive in February 2008.  Subsequent PKK attacks on the Turkish military in 2011 led Erdogan to repeat air strikes against them, alongside intensified fighting in southeastern Turkey.

The current Terror-Free Turkey initiative is not the first time that Erdogan has attempted to hold out an olive branch to the PKK.  In late 2012, when still prime minister, his government began a serious negotiation process with Abdullah Ocalan, the founder of the PKK, imprisoned on Imralı island since 1999.

The initiative produced a positive result in March 2013, when Ocalan issued a message calling for a ceasefire and the withdrawal of PKK fighters from Turkey.  Armed resistance ceased for a time, but the ceasefire did not hold.

A historic moment came on February 28, 2015.  At a joint press conference involving government representatives and leaders of the HDP (the Peoples’ Democratic Party), a message from Ocalan was read out calling on the PKK to take the “strategic and historical decision” to end the armed struggle.

It looked like a genuine call to transition from armed conflict to politics.  Yet once again the ceasefire unraveled. During 2015 a series of incidents led Erdogan to resume airstrikes against PKK positions in northern Iraq.

The resulting fighting was extremely destructive.  Almost 3,000 people were killed between July 2015 and July 2017.  Overall Reuters estimates that since 1984 the conflict has killed more than 40,000 people, including combatants and civilians.

This second attempt at resolving the PKK issue is quite different, triggered by a quite unexpected event.

In October 2024 Devlet Bahceli, leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and Erdogan's principal parliamentary ally, unexpectedly suggested that Ocalan be brought from prison to address parliament and call upon the PKK to dissolve itself.

The initiative was all the more startling because Bahceli had historically taken one of the hardest nationalist positions against the Kurdish political movement.  Erdogan described the development as a potentially “historic window of opportunity.”

A dramatic address by Ocalan to the Turkish parliament – akin, perhaps to that by Anwar Sadat to Israel’s Knesset in 1977 – never took place.  But there were a series of meetings between DEM politicians and Ocalan at Imrali prison, and in February 2025 Ocalan issued a crucial statement.

He called upon the PKK to abandon the armed struggle and lay down its arms, to dissolve itself and pursue the Kurdish question through democratic politics.

The important difference from 2015 is that the current process does not seek yet another ceasefire, but explicitly envisages the end of the PKK as an organization – an outcome announced in May 2025, when the PKK said its 12th Congress had decided to dissolve the organization and end its armed struggle.

In July 2025, Ocalan appeared in a rare video and said the armed struggle was over.  He called for a transition toward democratic politics and asking the Turkish parliament to establish a mechanism to oversee disarmament and the broader peace process.

The result is Turkey's August 2026 law – a legal mechanism for implementing the PKK's decision to dissolve and disarm.  But its principal provisions are conditional on verified PKK disarmament, and that step has not yet been taken. The process is at its most delicate point. 

Currently the debate is focused heavily on where and how PKK weapons are to be surrendered and who verifies the operation. Reports indicate that Turkish intelligence and security officials have been dealing with counterparts in Iraq, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and Syria over precisely these practical questions.

A terror-free Turkey is in the balance.

 

 

 

 

Gaza’s comeback kid

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 6 October 2026 

   On July 9, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced that parliamentary elections would be held on November 28 in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.  In my original text I wrote: "If they indeed take place, they will be the first for 20 years."  Well, of course, Abbas has now postponed them to the latter end of 2027.

The last, in 2006, were won by Hamas​.  They were followed by a violent power struggle with Fatah, culminating in Hamas​ gaining control of Gaza in 2007.  ​Ever since, the continuing popularity of Hamas with the Palestinian people has inhibited Abbas, fearful of losing power, from holding elections.  Perhaps it is the Trump peace plan for Gaza, currently being implemented by the Board of Peace and committed to disempowering Hamas, that has encouraged Abbas to try to regain some democratic credibility ​by approving new elections.

In any event, the announcement has brought Mohammed Dahlan once again to the forefront of the Palestinian political arena.

Dahlan was born in Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza in 1961. He joined Fatah's youth movement as a teenager and was repeatedly imprisoned by Israel. Following the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, Abbas appointed him head of the Palestinian Preventive Security Force in Gaza. He became so powerful that the Strip was nicknamed "Dahlanistan". 

Their relationship subsequently collapsed amid growing fears within Abbas’s camp that Dahlan was being primed by the US to succeed him.  Dahlan was expelled from Fatah in 2011 amid allegations of corruption and involvement in a plot to assassinate Yasser Arafat, allegations he denied.  He went into exile in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where he became an adviser to Mohamed bin Zayed, now UAE president.

By removing Dahlan from Palestinian politics Abbas unintentionally converted him into a regional political operator who was no longer dependent upon the PA.  Over the subsequent decade Dahlan accumulated regional connections and became an important political operator for Abu Dhabi.  He also developed relationships in Egypt and elsewhere and maintained connections with Israeli security figures. 

While living in exile in the UAE, Dahlan founded a party called Democratic Reformist Current (DRC) inside Gaza.  The DRC ​worked hard to secure a joint alliance with both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)​, and on October 1 ​an electoral coalition was announced.  Palestinian sources say the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) could also join.

Dahlan is attempting a political re-entry via Gaza. He is not seeking to govern it personally. He seems to be trying to turn his UAE-backed Fatah dissident network into a bridge between Hamas, other Fatah breakaways, Egypt, the UAE and the US-led Gaza peace process.

He has proposed what amounts to a political formula for overcoming the Palestinian split. Rather than a contest for control of the PA, he advocates a “national partnership”. This would incorporate elections to determine political representation and office, alongside a new constitution or “national social contract” emphasizing popular legitimacy and the peaceful transfer of power.

His proposals are deliberately broad in scope. They give Hamas a say in Palestinian national decision-making; they offer a future Palestinian leadership a language of unity; and they give the UAE, Egypt and the US a Palestinian figure with Gaza roots who can speak to all the parties involved, including Israel and external sponsors.

Dahlan’s plan has not yet been endorsed by his electoral allies, but neither have they disavowed it.  His involvement places him at the center of the Palestinian political game.  He has brought himself closer than ever to a return to Palestinian political leadership.

Moreover, Dahlan seems to have taken on a mediating role – a position he could not aspire to ten years ago. He now appears to have channels of communication with Hamas and other Palestinian factions, as well as with the UAE, Egypt, Washington and parts of the Israeli security establishment. 

He will be aware that the Palestinian parliamentary elections could possibly bring to an end the transitional administrative arrangements in Gaza being overseen by the Board of Peace.

The Gaza peace plan, endorsed by the UN Security Council, envisages Gaza moving through a temporary international-backed arrangement. The Board of Peace was established to oversee that transition, while the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) was created as a Palestinian, technocratic and explicitly apolitical body to administer Gaza's civil affairs. It is intended to operate until the Palestinian Authority has completed its reform program.

The ultimate objective is therefore not an international administration of Gaza, but the reconstitution of Palestinian government, with Gaza eventually reunited politically with the West Bank.  Nobody has yet formally declared that the November elections are the mechanism by which the Board of Peace will hand Gaza to its eventual government. But Dahlan’s recent contacts with Hamas and his involvement in discussions over Gaza's reconstruction appear to fit remarkably well into this political problem.

A possible scenario could see Palestinians participate in national elections and a substantially reformed Palestinian government emerging.  Gaza and the West Bank could be brought back under one Palestinian political authority.

          In short, the election could become the mechanism through which the old Palestinian political order is replaced without the Board of Peace itself choosing its successor.  An American- or Arab-appointed Palestinian government taking power in Gaza would be vulnerable to the accusation that it was simply an externally imposed administration.  An elected Palestinian legislature producing a new government would have a much stronger claim to legitimacy.

If Dahlan succeeds in bringing Hamas, his DRC, Fatah dissidents and other Palestinian currents into a workable political arrangement, he would  inevitably become central to Gaza’s political future. The wider issue is whether Dahlan can help construct a bridge between Hamas's exit from government, international reconstruction, Palestinian elections and a reformed Palestinian Authority.

If that bridge can be built, the Board of Peace would cease to be merely an international administration imposed upon a devastated territory.  It could become the temporary scaffolding allowing a new Palestinian political system to be constructed.  Far from simply rebuilding Gaza, Dahlan could therefore play a central role in providing the Strip with a truly viable and hopeful future.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Mohammed Dahlan: The man who could help reshape Gaza after Hamas", 6 October 2026:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-910525

 

Jordan and the Palestinians

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 29 September 2026

On September 23, King Abdullah of Jordan addressed the UN General Assembly. He devoted much of his speech to lambasting Israel. He maintained that what he called “one of the world's longest running occupations” broke international law, and that the world had ignored it for decades.

   Of course he had nothing to say about the Jordanian monarchy’s​ unhappy relationship with the Palestinians, ​with its own history of violence, repression and unresolved grievance, nor of the several charges of flouting international law that Jordan has been accused of over the years.

In the 1948–49 war, for example, Jordan’s Arab Legion took control of the West Bank. On April 24, 1950, the Jordanian parliament approved its annexation, declaring “complete unity between the two banks of the Jordan” in a single Hashemite kingdom ruled by King Abdullah’s great-grandfather, Abdullah I. ​ Arabs resident in the West Bank became Jordanian citizens.

 The Arab League refused to recognize Jordan’s annexation.  So did the rest of the world, with the sole exception of Britain and, it has been suggested (though details remain unclear), Pakistan.

​The UN characterized Jordan’s annexation as lacking international legal validity.  International law does not recognize the acquisition of territory through the use of force as a lawful basis for acquiring sovereignty.

If Jordan flouted international law when it annexed the West Bank, it compounded its disregard for the legal niceties when it reversed its decision.

Until July 31, 1988 ​most Arabs living in the West Bank were, as a matter of Jordanian law and practice, Jordanian citizens.  On that day King Hussein, Abdullah’s father, announced that Jordan was ending its legal and administrative relationship with the territory with immediate effect.​  Under the disengagement regulations, some one million Arab​s resident in the West Bank were ​suddenly stripped of their Jordanian citizenship.​  All at once they were no longer Jordanian.      

​Human Rights Watch describes them as becoming stateless Palestinians under Israeli occupation.​  Over time their Jordanian passports were replaced with temporary Jordanian travel documents that did not confer citizenship.  

Loss of nationality had serious legal consequences.  They had no right of residence in Jordan.  Non-citizens could not vote or stand for office. They were excluded from state employment and faced serious obstacles in accessing work, education, health care and other services.

International human rights law prohibits​ the arbitrary deprivation of nationality.  Article 15(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality.”  

The fact that Jordan’s 1988 disengagement stripped a whole defined population of its existing nationality, without an individualized process and without a replacement nationality, makes the charge against Jordan of arbitrary illegality a powerful one.

In his speech​ to the UN, Abdullah called on world opinion to denounce Israel for Palestinian deaths.  He might also have acknowledged that Yasser Arafat once accused King Hussein, his father, of killing 25,000 Palestinians – a figure generally believed to have been wildly exaggerated for propaganda purposes.

The episode is usually called Black September, although it lasted from September 1970 until the following July, and the death toll remains disputed.  The commonly cited estimate of Palestinian deaths is in the low thousands, including both fighters and civilians.  Jordanian soldiers also died. What is not disputed is that the events of 1970–71 left a deep and bitter Palestinian-Jordanian legacy.

​After the Six-Day War​ in 1967,​ it was from Jordan that Palestinian​ fighters began mounting guerrilla operations against Israel​. ​ By 1969 ​Arafat was leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), an umbrella body in which his Fatah movement was dominant.  The organization and its constituent groups ​started functioning increasingly from within Jordan.  Armed groups established bases and checkpoints in and around cities and refugee camps ​acting as a law unto themselves, sometimes defying the police and civil authorities.

​Soon King Hussein ​ was fac​ing an armed Palestinian movement operating inside his kingdom ​ and challeng​ing the authority of the state.​ He decided to move against Arafat's​ PLO and its armed forces, the fedayeen. ​

The crisis came to a head in September 1970.  The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)​, a constituent body of the PLO,  hijacked several international passenger aircraft. Three aircraft were eventually taken to Dawson's Field near Zarqa, Jordan, where passengers were removed and the aircraft blown up before the world's television cameras – a spectacular display that humiliated the Jordanian authorities.​ 

For Hussein, the question was no longer how to restrain the fedayeen, but who governed Jordan. ​ On September 16 he declared martial law.​  The following day the Jordanian Army opened a major offensive against Palestinian positions in Amman, Zarqa, Irbid and elsewhere.​​

The operation was considerably more than a simple expulsion.  For a ​time it amounted to a civil war between the Jordanian state and heavily armed Palestinian organizations.  The fighting was intense and involved artillery, tanks and infantry.  Jordanian forces attacked PLO positions.  Palestinian fighters resisted and, in some places, effectively controlled territory.

A ceasefire ​hammered out in Cairo on September 27 ​proved totally ineffective.  ​The Palestinian militias remained entrenched and operative within Jordan.   In early 1971 Hussein resumed the campaign against the​m.  ​Finally the Jordanian Army ​succeeded in driving the fedayeen out of their remaining urban strongholds. The ​last major ​encounter took place in July 1971​, and ​organized ​Palestinian resistance in Jordan was effectively destroyed.​  Arafat and senior PLO figures​ ​fled.

​They escaped across the Jordanian-Syrian ​border​, and regrouped in Lebanon.  Thousands of Palestinian fighters were ​driven out of Jordan and followed them. ​

It had been a bloody encounter.  As well as Jordanian soldiers, thousands of Palestinians, including civilians​, had been killed. The episode produced a particularly bitter Palestinian-Jordanian legacy.  In 1971 a militant  Palestinian group, which subsequently called itself the Black September Organization, assassinated Jordan’s prime minister Wasfi al-Tal.

None of this ​unhappy history disposes of any moral or legal questions raised by the current situation, but it does complicate Abdullah’s posture of unqualified moral denunciation of Israel.

          In short, standing at the UN podium vilifying Israel, King Abdullah might have borne in mind the old adage:  “People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "King Abdullah’s UN attack on Israel overlooks Jordan’s own troubled history," 29 September 2026:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-909962

Published in Eurasia Review, 5 October 2026

https://www.eurasiareview.com/05102026-jordan-and-the-palestinians-oped/