The Commonwealth, Israel and Palestine

On 11 March 2013 Queen Elizabeth formally signed the “Commonwealth Charter” - a document setting out for the first time 16 core values shared by the peoples of the Commonwealth and their governments.

The Commonwealth is an aspect of contemporary life that most people know little about. Perhaps the Commonwealth games, interspersed every four years between the Olympics, might occasionally raise a flicker of interest, but as for the background or purposes of the organization itself, there is little general knowledge or interest. And yet the Commonwealth has the potential to exert an enormous power for good on global politics. Judging by the charter just signed by Queen Elizabeth as its head, and endorsed by the 54 governments who are members, the organization also has the collective will to do so. What it has so far failed to demonstrate, and may still lack, is the drive to provide positive leadership on the world stage in favour of the core values it professes.

The Commonwealth is a voluntary association of 54 nations most of whom, but not all, were once part of the British Empire. All of them, however, regardless of their individual constitutions, agree to recognize the current British monarch as head of the association. The members have a combined population of 2.1 billion people, almost a third of the world’s population. What unites this diverse group of nations, beyond the ties of history, language and institutions, are the association’s values of democracy, freedom, peace and the rule of law.

Essentially, these are the basis of the 16 core values now enshrined in the charter. They include a commitment by Commonwealth leaders to uphold democracy and human rights (“we are implacably opposed to all forms of discrimination”); to advance international peace and security (”we reiterate our absolute condemnation of all acts of terrorism in whatever form or wherever they occur or by whomsoever perpetrated”); to promote tolerance and respect, freedom of expression, the rule of law, good governance, to protect the environment, provide access to health, education and food for all, promote gender equality and women’s empowerment, and recognise the positive role of young people in promoting these and other values.

The Commonwealth is not a political union, but an intergovernmental organization in which countries with diverse social, political and economic backgrounds are regarded as equal in status. Alongside shared values, Commonwealth nations share strong trade links; trade with another Commonwealth member has been shown to be up to 50 per cent more than with a non-member.

Five countries are currently seeking membership of the Commonwealth. Neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority (PA) are among them – though, as part of former British mandated Palestine, both would have a stronger claim than, say, Mozambique or Rwanda, which are members, or Algeria which has applied to join.

Could a stated intention to apply for membership of the Commonwealth by both Israel and a sovereign Palestine be a positive factor in the process of negotiating a solution to the Israel-Palestine dispute?

One organization that would probably support the idea – way off the map though it might appear at the moment − would be the Israel Britain and the Commonwealth Association (IBCA), a body formed as far back as 1953 with the aim of encouraging, developing and extending social, cultural and economic relations between Israel and the Commonwealth. Over the years the IBCA has developed close links with the British and Commonwealth embassies. Regular meetings, addressed by prominent politicians, diplomats and academics and attended by many members of the diplomatic corps, have fostered a continuing dialogue between representatives of Israel and the nations of the Commonwealth.

And indeed Israel may quite recently have come close to applying to join the Commonwealth. It was only in 2007 that the Jewish Journal reported:

“As a former British colony, Israel is being considered for Commonwealth membership. Commonwealth officials said this week they had set up a special committee to consider membership applications by several Middle Eastern and African nations. Speaking on condition of anonymity, diplomats said those interested in applying include Israel and the Palestinian Authority, both of which exist on land ruled by a British Mandate from 1918 to 1948. An Israeli official did not deny the report, but said, ‘This issue is not on our agenda right now.’”

Perhaps right now it should be. With renewal of the peace process looming – fostered, perhaps, by President Obama’s forthcoming visit to the region and a new Israeli government about to take office with peace on the agenda − some new idea is needed to burnish the old, old arguments. Whatever Israel’s traditional enemies might assert, there is no doubt that Israel’s core values precisely match those of the Commonwealth. The Palestinian Authority could make a reasonable case for aspiring to most of them – though the same could not be said of Hamas, the de facto government of Gaza, an essential element in any future sovereign Palestine. However, it is the PA, as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people” that is the acknowledged negotiating partner – and what within the Palestinian body politic might follow any peace agreement is anybody’s guess.

The offer of future membership of the Commonwealth to both Israel and a new sovereign Palestine would provide a new element in any peace negotiations – a previously unconsidered framework within which the two states might flourish, for it would incorporate acceptance of the peace agreement by a swathe of nations from every continent, the assurance of new markets and flourishing trade relations for both parties, and membership of an association dedicated to democracy, freedom and peaceful co-existence.

It’s a thought.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line magazine, 17 March 2013:
http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Opinion/The-Commonwealth-Israel-and-Palestine

What's wrong with the Human Rights Council?

See revised article "What's wrong with the Human Rights Council" posted on 11 August 2013.

Lebanon in crisis

Damascus is half-an-hour’s drive from the Lebanese border, and refugees from the civil war currently raging in Syria are flooding over that border in ever-increasing numbers. An authoritative estimate is that asylum-seekers from Syria have reached 400,000 – which, if true, would represent a 10 per cent increase in Lebanon’s population of 4 million. If this influx of homeless people into a small, and not particularly prosperous, country continues on this scale, it will speedily turn a humanitarian crisis into a disaster.

The number of refugees involved is, moreover, only one aspect of the problem for Lebanon. Just as important is the sectarian allegiance of the majority of those pouring into the country. For they are mainly Sunni Muslims fleeing from President Bashar Assad and his ruthless Shi’ite-affiliated régime, supported as it is by Iran and its protégé, the Islamist terrorist organization Hezbollah. But Hezbollah has managed to infiltrate itself into Lebanon’s body politic, and is an integral element in the government. So the Sunni refugees are perforce flying into the arms of a country where a government minister is a member of Hezbollah, and the terrorist organization controls eleven of the thirty seats in the cabinet. In the circumstances, it is perhaps not surprising that the Lebanese government has done little for their hapless visitors, who have largely been left to fend for themselves.

The civil war in Syria − which to a large extent involves a Sunni-backed attempt to oust the Shi’ite-affiliated Assad régime − is a deeply divisive issue in Lebanon, and its sectarian issues are inhibiting the government from taking decisive action to relieve the humanitarian crisis on its doorstep. Lebanon’s political constitution is a complex mechanism, aimed at achieving a delicate balance of power between Christians, Sunnis and Sh’ites. By design the composition of the government, together with that of many public institutions, is shared between these three elements.

Which explains Lebanon’s reluctance to unbalance the country’s fragile stability, and also why reporter Anne Barnard, writing in the New York Times, notes that Lebanon’s refugee crisis does not match the familiar image of vast, centralized tent camps and armies of foreign aid organizations. The crisis, she says, “is nowhere, and everywhere. Displaced Syrians seem to fill every nook and cranny: half-finished cinder block houses, stables, crowded apartments… Drying laundry peeks from construction sites. Bedsheets hang in shop windows, concealing stark living spaces. Daffodil sellers, shoeshine men, women and children begging in Beirut − all incant, “Min Suria.” From Syria.”

One other factor may be deterring the Lebanese authorities from acting more positively. The nation has been overwhelmed by at least two previous refugee crises − in 1948 and again in 1967, when Palestinians poured over the border during two of Israel’s conflicts with Arab forces that had combined against it. The consequences are ever-present. Because the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has bestowed the status of “refugee” on all the descendants of those who originally fled their homes, generation after generation, regardless of how much time has elapsed, the number of so-called Palestinian “refugees” has mushroomed. As regards Lebanon, over 400,000 Palestine refugees, as defined by UNWRA, live in the country, half of them in 12 official refugees camps. But the Lebanese, only too aware of the delicate system of checks and balances that keeps their state afloat, have consistently denied them the right to settle and adopt Lebanese citizenship. A sudden influx of Muslims into the body politic would totally unbalance the constitutional basis of the state.

Locked into the collective national memory, also, is what can happen when refugee issues remain unresolved and passions become inflamed. The Lebanese remember the shameful episode in 1976, when Christian Phalangist militias overran and destroyed three Palestinian refugee camps in East Beirut (Tel-El-Zaater, Jisr-El-Basha and Dbayeh). Tel-El-Zaater was besieged for 51 days and, when it surrendered, an estimated 3,000 of its inhabitants were massacred.

So, in an attempt to preserve the national status quo and avoid providing citizenship to some 400,000 foreigners, the Lebanese government has consistently deprived Palestinian refugees of basic rights – for example, the government bars most of them from 73 job categories including professions such as medicine, law and engineering. They are not allowed to own property, and those in refugee camps need a special permit to travel. Unlike other foreigners in Lebanon, Palestinian refugees are denied access to the Lebanese health care system. A 2007 study by Amnesty International denounced the "appalling social and economic condition" of Palestinian Arabs in Lebanon.

With all this as the background, it is scarcely surprising that a further 400,000 Syrian Sunni Muslims flooding into the country are not being welcomed with open arms by the Lebanese authorities in general, and Hezbollah-affiliated officials in particular. Until quite recently no camps had been provided for Syrians, and international agencies had been given only limited access.

Lebanon has, however, recently made a move to ease its hard line on the issue. With no end to the problem in sight, and the Assad government hanging on to power, the Lebanese government recently approved plans to co-operate with the United Nations in managing the crisis. The UN now awaits funds and permission to build two transit camps, each housing 5,000 refugees − a drop in the ocean, perhaps but, to change metaphors, also a move in the right direction.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line magazine, 10 March 2013:
http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Opinion/Article.aspx?id=305894&prmusr=N5GESLlNDaJz0zr2BbXKlUwApVwEOkO69Md5K00yiWOpkbFTQUAlNxEYIUVQNh5D

Hezbollah and the EU

On 18 July 2012 forty-two Israeli tourists, having landed at Burgas airport in Bulgaria on a flight from Tel-Aviv, boarded a bus to their hotel. A suicide bomber among the passengers detonated an explosive device that also killed the bus driver and five Israelis, and injured a further thirty-two. On 5 February 2013, after an exhaustive investigation, the Bulgarian interior minister said that it was a reasonable assumption that two suspects, who lived in Lebanon, were members of the militant wing of Hezbollah. Forensic evidence and intelligence sources also pointed to Hezbollah's involvement in the blast.

On 18 February 2013 Bulgarian foreign minister, Nikolai Mladenov, was in Brussels briefing his EU counterparts on the seven-month investigation and its conclusions. In a news conference Mladenov said: “We believe the attack that happened in Burgas last year was organised by people connected to the military wing of Hezbollah…We in Europe need to take collective measures to make sure that such attacks will never happen again on EU soil... We must send a strong message to the rest of the world, that activities like this are unacceptable, no matter where they are planned or executed.”

The EU seems reluctant to respond. Far from sending a strong message to the world, the EU’s foreign policy chief − British peeress Baroness Ashton − has resorted to dithering and equivocation. Meanwhile Hezbollah – indicted by a UN tribunal for the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, the repository of vast stocks of weaponry supplied by Iran, the active supporter of Bashar Assad’s régime in Syria, designated a “terrorist organisation” by Canada, the UK, the US and even Turkey − as far as the EU is concerned remains persona grata.

The fact is that Hezbollah has a 30-year history of terrorist activity in Lebanon, the Middle East and around the globe, directed against the United States and the West, against pro-Western Arab states, Hezbollah's enemies in Lebanon − and, of course, Israel and the Jewish people generally, usually at the behest of Iran, which uses Hezbollah as its main proxy.

For example. there was the attempted attack on the Israeli embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan in 2008, carried out by two Hezbollah operatives who underwent training in Iran. The plan was exposed when Azeri security forces stopped a car carrying the two Hezbollah operatives and found guns, explosives and pictures of the Israeli embassy. The two were tried, found guilty, and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Then there was the unsuccessful attempt in 2011 to assassinate the Israeli consul in Istanbul which injured eight Turkish citizens. According to Sky News Iran’s Quds Force Unit 400 was behind the attack.

And now a man is on trial in Cyprus suspected of helping plan a terrorist attack against Israeli tourists on the island. On Wednesday 20 February he admitted in court to being an active member of Hezbollah since 2007, trained to use weapons and having acted as a courier for the organisation in Turkey, France and the Netherlands. In court Hossam Taleb Yaacoub gave details of meetings with his Hezbollah handler, and said that he had staked out locations in Cyprus known to be popular with Israeli tourists. He had also noted the number plates of tour buses carrying Israelis.

Whether this new turn of the screw will be sufficient to induce the EU finally to designate Hezbollah a terrorist organisation is open to speculation. The suspicion is that what is holding the EU back is the fact that Hezbollah has managed to insinuate itself into the heart of the Lebanese body politic.

Lebanon's history is, perhaps, more convoluted than many another state's – and this is not the place to rehearse it in detail. Sufficient to note that, liberated by Free French and British troops in 1941, Lebanon was declared an independent sovereign nation, and France handed over power to the first Lebanese government as from 1 January 1944.

The "National Pact" established the basis of modern Lebanon. Political power in Lebanon is allocated on what is known as a "confessional" system, with seats in the parliament allocated 50-50 as between Muslims and Christians. The top three positions in the state are allocated so that the President is always a Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister, a Sunni Muslim, and the Speaker of the Parliament, a Shi'a Muslim.

This partly explains the presence of Hezbollah in the Lebanese government. Hezbollah, an extremist Islamist group, originated within the majority Shiite block of Lebanon society. It emerged with a separate identity in the early part of the 1980s as an Iranian-sponsored movement resisting the presence of Western and Israeli forces. Perhaps its most notorious terrorist actions were those of 23 October 1983 when the United States Marine barracks in Beirut was blown up in a suicide bombing. Just six months previously, on 18 April, the US embassy in Beirut had been subject to a suicide car bombing which killed 63 people.

Born in blood, fire and explosion, Hezbollah can scarcely be said to have become respectable, but the group achieved a certain acceptability in Lebanese society following Israel's withdrawal in May 2000. In the election that followed Hezbollah formed an electoral alliance with the Amal party and took all 23 seats in South Lebanon, out of a total 128 parliamentary seats.

Since then Hezbollah has participated in Lebanon's parliamentary process. Following the elections in April 2009 Hariri constructed a 30-minister cabinet made up of five ministers nominated by President Suleiman, 15 from Hariri's coalition, and 10 from the opposition including two members of Hezbollah. It is this semi-respectable position achieved by Hezbollah − doubtless augmented by the emphasis placed by the organisation on social and welfare activities among the population − which is deterring the EU from acknowledging that at its heart Hezbollah is a ruthless, merciless, terrorist organisation dedicated to achieving its Islamist aims without regard to moral considerations of any sort.

Perhaps eventually the penny will drop.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line magazine, 26 February 2013:
http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Opinion/Article.aspx?id=304615&prmusr=CFWiaSoT%2bBetju%2f7Zhb29xw48i9QBbxAPbWglsBs4HZMXjyL6g0O6PQaOaQ3LKtb

Barack and Bibi, older and wiser

Benjamin Netanyahu has been remarkably unfortunate. On the three occasions that events have propelled him to the premiership in Israel, he has had a Democratic president in the White House to deal with - and let's be honest about it, Bibi is a born Republican.

Back in the 1990s Netanyahu's relationship with Bill Clinton was a disaster. The two men never got on. After meeting him for the first time, Clinton is reported as remarking: "He thinks he is the superpower, and we are here to do whatever he requires." One of Clinton's aides categorised Netanyahu's performance in the White House as "nearly insufferable". And later, in 2000, Netanyahu was vehemently opposed to Clinton's Camp David peace initiative during which the then Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, and Yasser Arafat, appeared to come close to an agreement that would have given a sovereign Palestinian state by far the greater part of the West Bank, and also east Jerusalem as a capital.

Following Barack Obama’s spectacular appearance in the White House as America’s first black president, Netanyahu again found himself prime minister of Israel. But he was heading a fragile coalition, held together through the support of right wing religious parties unyielding in their support for the settler movement and the indivisibility of Jerusalem. Nevertheless, under pressure from Obama, Bibi succeeded in persuading his Cabinet to agree to his formally supporting the two-state solution and, in November 2009, to vote in favour of a ten-month freeze on construction in the West Bank.

If anyone had hoped that Netanyahu had learned a little more by way of diplomatic niceties in the intervening decade-and-a-half, however, there was little sign of it. When he and Barack Obama met in person in March 2010, there was certainly no meeting of minds. Hours of discussion between the two failed to result in an agreed media statement, and Netanyahu postponed his return to Israel by an extra day in the hope of achieving some form of common position. He and the President spoke long and earnestly; Israeli officials had discussions with their opposite numbers, but a common position on building in east Jerusalem could not be hammered out.

Now history seems to have offered the two men a second chance. President Obama is back in the White House just starting his second term, while Netanyahu is in the process of hammering out a new coalition government following the recent general election. Nothing is certain in politics, but it seems a pretty fair bet that he will indeed soon be heading a new Israeli government. Obama’s visit has been mooted as taking place on March 20; Bibi has until March 16 to construct his coalition and present it to the Knesset for a vote of confidence.

Assuming the meeting takes place, both men will indeed be older. Will they be wiser?

Take Netanyahu. The recent general election will have shown him that Israel’s heart is not in extreme right-wing policies, either domestically or in the foreign arena. The surprise element in the result – the emergence of the moderate Yesh Atid party with the second largest number of seats in the new Knesset − is a clear signal that the Israeli public would not dissent from re-opening peace negotiations with the PA. The “painful concessions” that might have to be made in any overall agreement – not possible in Netanyahu’s previous coalition with its heavy dependence on right wing and religious parties − now again emerge as possible shots in Israel’s armoury. Curiously, Netanyahu will come to his discussion with Obama, at least about the Israeli-Palestinian issue, strengthened, not weakened, by the loss of Likud-Beytanu seats.

And President Obama, what has he learned over the past four years? Well, his initial “let’s try it” approach at wooing the Muslim world – worth a try, perhaps, coming from the first US President with a Black Power background − proved a disastrous failure. Iran could not be deflected from its determination to develop nuclear weaponry, Syria dissolved into civil war well before a US ambassador could present himself at the court of President Assad, and poor Mahmoud Abbas was hedged into a corner by the Obama administration’s early and repeated demands on Israel to stop all settlement construction in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Once that demand had been made by the US President, there was no wriggle-room left for the PA President. He could scarcely ask for less. As a result, the “peace process” has been frozen solid for more than two years.

One other lesson perhaps learned since the glory days following Obama’s first election, is that the great central issue worrying the leaders of the Arab world – those, that is, not more directly concerned with the spill-over of the Arab Spring into their territories − is not the Israel-Palestine dispute. It is, as the mass of Wikileaks documents released into the public domain in 2010 revealed, their deep-seated fear of a nuclear-armed Iran. Many Arab leaders – especially, perhaps, in the Gulf states − view Iran’s bid for leadership of the Muslim world, to say nothing of its covert operations to achieve that aim, with alarm.

Older and wiser as they both now are, is there a chance that more mature and considered counsels will prevail when, and if, Barack and Bibi do meet next month? We need a meeting of hearts and of minds. Co-ordination both of intention and execution could achieve positive results in the two main areas they have to discuss: when and how to call a genuine halt to Iran’s aggressive nuclear capabilities, and when and how to start a genuine process leading to a final settlement of the festering Israel-Palestine dispute.

Have the Oslo Accords had their day?

If anyone believed that support for Palestinian national aspirations was ipso facto incompatible with maintaining close and friendly relations with Israel, they need only look to Cyprus.

On Friday 8 February Cyprus upgraded the status of its Palestinian Authority (PA) diplomatic representation to that of Embassy, and the head of the Palestinian diplomatic mission to Cyprus, Walid Al-Hassan, became a fully-fledged Ambassador. “All official correspondence will now be done in the name of the State of Palestine," he informed the world’s media. “Cyprus is the first European state to upgrade Palestinian status since the UN vote."

Until PA President Mahmoud Abbas succeeded in upgrading the Palestinians’ UN status to “non-member observer state” in November 2012, the broader Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” was, by general agreement, governed by the Oslo Accords. In accordance with those undertakings, signed in 1993 and 1995, both Israel and the Palestinians had agreed that a final status settlement would be negotiated between them. It is, therefore, a fair assumption that Abbas’s UN initiative amounted to turning his back on the Accords − and equally that the UN General Assembly, in its wisdom, had done likewise.

Yet both the General Assembly’s vote, and Cyprus’s subsequent upgrading of the PA’s diplomatic status are, in legal terms, merely cosmetic − they do nothing to change the status of the PA in international law. Nor does Cyprus’s initiative represent any sudden shift in policy, for it has always supported Palestinian sovereign aspirations. It was as far back as 1988 that Cyprus formally recognised Palestine as a state within the 1967 boundaries, while in May 2011 it upgraded what was then simply “the general delegation of Palestine” in Cyprus to the status of “diplomatic mission.”

However this decision is not perceived by the Cypriot government as altering its excellent relations with Israel which, like Greece’s, have been flourishing in recent years in parallel with the increasing deterioration of Israel’s relations with Turkey. In announcing the PA’s diplomatic upgrade, Foreign Minister Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis expressed "full support" not only for Palestinian aspirations for statehood and sovereignty but also for those of Israel for security through a comprehensive negotiated peace based on a two-state solution.

Israeli-Cyprus relations, excellent for a number of years and founded on a thriving tourist industry, have been boosted by the recent discovery of huge oil and natural gas reserves in the eastern Mediterranean, as well as what is now the world's longest subsea electric power cable. The alliance has been further strengthened by collaboration on military, cultural and political matters.

All of which goes to show that support for Palestinian national aspirations is not necessarily incompatible with maintaining close and friendly relations with Israel. What it does betray is the basic anomaly at the heart of the current state of the Oslo Accords. In all logic they are a dead letter, yet they also provide the basis on which the current fragile status quo on the West Bank is maintained.

Under the Accords Israel agreed to withdraw in part from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in favor of autonomous Palestinian rule, which was to last for a five-year interim period. Permanent status negotiations, based on UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, would commence no later than May 1996.

Israel indeed withdrew, but the final status negotiations never took place. A basic requirement of the agreement was breached; accordingly the Oslo Accords no longer governed the relationship between Israel and the PA. What had been established, however, was the first phase of providing the Palestinians with self-government pending a permanent agreement. Under the Accords the West Bank and the Gaza strip were regarded as one territory, and in 1994 Israel began a phased withdrawal from Gaza and a handover of its administration to the PA. The West Bank was divided into three zones:

• Area A –under the Palestinian Authority's full control and including all Palestinian cities and surrounding areas with no civilian Israeli presence.
• Area B –under the Palestinian Authority's civil control and Israel's security control and including areas of dense Palestinian population with no civilian Israeli presence.
• Area C –under full Israeli control, except over Palestinian civilians. This area includes all West Bank settlements and their immediate vicinity as well as strategic areas dubbed "security zones."

The Gaza strip was wrenched from the PA’s grasp in 2008 by Hamas, the Islamist terrorist group opposed to all attempts at reaching a peace agreement with Israel, while also aiming to oust their rivals, Fatah, from the West Bank and perhaps, eventually, from the PA altogether.

As for the West Bank, the Oslo Accords arrangement remains, by mutual agreement, the basis on which the region is currently administered. It is. moreover. the generally accepted road map along which the parties will have to travel to reach a final agreement. The Accords were, after all, signed not only by Israel and the PA as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”, but were also witnessed by representatives of the USA, Russia, Egypt, Jordan, Norway and the EU. Despite the inconsistencies at the heart of the current situation, despite the PA’s new status at the UN, they remain the only generally acknowledged road map.

So half-dead the Oslo Accords might well be, but they must surely provide the starting point for any new attempt to bring the parties back to the negotiating table. As the catch-phrase has it: “there’s life in the old dog yet”.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line magazine, 14 February 2013:
http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Opinion/Article.aspx?id=303147&prmusr=scK4u5QXSHEwzHAi6aqeDOI8dmmPhePOFTyhs1CZu%2boyhzFZHWbRWkFQx1pDT9j%2f

After Assad

The 13-year rule of Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, is drawing to a close, although the exact nature of its demise remains, at present, uncertain. It has been a long-drawn-out process. When he took power in 2000, Bashar inherited a formidable grip on power, initiated by his father Hafez. With members of the Alawite sect placed in key positions in the ruthless secret police and the military, both organisations were tightly integrated into the ruling élite. The process of dislodging it is taking mammoth efforts which, in turn, have resulted in truly terrible humanitarian consequences.

What is now a fully-fledged civil war in Syria began in March 2011 as one manifestation of the Arab Spring, then flaring across the Arab world. In April the Syrian Army, deployed to quell the uprising, began firing on demonstrators. Opposition forces, composed originally of defected soldiers and civilian volunteers, became increasingly armed and organized, but soon opportunistic jihadist bodies, supported from outside sources, were exploiting the chaotic situation on both sides.

Assad was supported by pro-Shi’ite jihadists. When he falls, pro-Sunni extremists, such as the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), will probably gain the upper hand as the Islamists continue their own power struggles for a while. As a result, Israel may find itself facing MB régimes in two of its major Arab neighbors – Egypt and Syria.

On a more positive note, the departure of Assad will certainly represent a major blow to Iran’s strategic position in the Middle East. Syria is an integral element in Iran’s anti-Israel alliance, and the conduit through which it supplies Hezbollah with military and financial support. Which perhaps explains the current effort of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to repair fences with Egypt. After 34 years of non-contact, initiated because of Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel, Iran courted Egypt’s MB President Mohamed Morsi with a three-day visit early in February.

The occasion was not without incident. The New York Times reported that during a visit to Al-Azhar mosque and university, Egypt’s seat of Sunni scholarship, Ahmadinejad was publicly upbraided by his hosts, who accused Shi’ites of interfering in Arab countries, including Egypt and Bahrain, and of discriminating against Sunnis in Iran. Later, a protester, identified as a Syrian angered at Iran’s alliance with Syria’s president Assad, tried to hit Ahmadinejad with a shoe. Finally four people were arrested for attacking the Iranian leader’s motorcade. Deep-seated divisions are not so easily healed.

In fact, nothing could really replace the loss to Iran of so vital a strategic ally as Syria. If the Iranian nuclear story does finally, after Assad’s departure, culminate in a strike by Israel or the US, Syria would be unable to contribute to Iran’s response, while Hezbollah would be denied a critical corridor of support and resupply during and after the confrontation.

Throughout the civil war, Iran, Hezbollah and Russia have actively supported the Assad régime, but the West as a whole has resisted the temptation to become directly involved. It has relied instead mainly on strong words.

For example, at the end of January, amid reports of the wholesale killing of civilians by the Syrian army, US President Obama released a video statement to the Syrian people: "In the face of this barbarism, the United States has joined with nations around the world in calling for an end to the Assad regime, and a transition that leads to a peaceful, inclusive and democratic Syria.”

Only Israel among the Western democracies, perceiving some of the possible dangers flowing from the fall of Assad, has taken effective action. The eventual fate of Assad’s huge arsenal of missiles, sophisticated ground-to-air and ground-to-sea rockets, and chemical weapons, is of as great a concern to the democratic world as to Israel. Not only might Assad seek to ensure that they are removed to some jihadist safe haven before the apocalypse, but In the chaos of a post-Assad Syria they could as easily fall into the hands of jihadists in Syria itself, or of Hezbollah in Lebanon. In either eventuality the West would be at risk, though Israel would probably be the terrorists’ prime target.

Israel’s presumed airstrike within Syria on the night of 29-30 January was aimed at countering such threats. Some media reported that Israeli fighter jets struck a Syrian convoy suspected of carrying SA-17 missile parts, a Russian-made, medium-range delivery system, and other equipment to Hezbollah in Lebanon; others that an Israeli strike targeted a research facility near Damascus – probably Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Center (CERS), a state organization suspected of developing biological and chemical weapons and transferring them to Hezbollah and Hamas.

The fall of Assad is likely to plunge the region into a new era of instability. A fragmented, decentralized, and dysfunctional Syria is the likely outcome, with Tehran remaining active in parts of the country. If so, the existing jihadist challenge to Israel along the Sinai border may well be matched by a new jihadist challenge from within Syria, perhaps both coordinated. This possibility may explain why Israel recently began erecting a sophisticated security fence in the Golan, similar to the one just completed in Sinai.

A huge destabilized area in the centre of the Middle East is in no one’s interests – it is likely to become a tempting hunting ground for vested jihadist entities whose main interests are their own bitter power struggles. Coordinated planning involving the US, the EU and Israel, with the aim of averting the worst possible scenarios in post-Assad Syria, is becoming an urgent necessity.

Published in the on-line Jerusalem Post magazine, 7 February 2013:
http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Opinion/Article.aspx?id=302483&prmusr=SooRcOtlke/2h04xdVPFe03f8aOBZbbf3GP90aE317ZarZUWhOZ0ItyAlGXZecXk

Israel's network of friends

As Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, stood before the UN General Assembly last November and asked them to upgrade Palestine to a “non-member observer state”, 41 nations withstood the intense pressure of world opinion in favour of the bid, and abstained. The world’s media concentrated on the fact that 138 members voted for the upgrade, but the 41 abstentions represent something of diplomatic triumph for Israel.

No one disputes that Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, had an acute mind and the capacity to think strategically, attributes abundantly apparent in the foreign policy strategy most closely connected to his name: the Alliance of the Periphery, or the Periphery Doctrine. This concept, born out of the circumstances of the 1950s, called for Israel to develop close strategic alliances with non-Arab Muslim states in order to counteract the united opposition of Arab states to Israel’s very existence.

As conceived by Ben Gurion, the policy was directed primarily towards Turkey and pre-revolutionary Iran. In 1950 Turkey and Iran became the first and, for a long time, the only Muslim states to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, and for many years Israel enjoyed long, close and fruitful relationships, involving extensive military and industrial cooperation, with both. These mutually beneficial arrangements served as a counter-weight to the pressure of enmity generated by the largely hostile Arab nations surrounding the fledgling Israel.

Israel's basic strategic need in this respect has not changed in the past sixty years. Geographically, Israel is still a tiny island of Western democratic values set in a sea of enemies, many bent on obliterating it by whatever means. Driven by these circumstances, successive Israeli governments have developed an expanded version of the Periphery Doctrine, which has worked reasonably well.

With an eye on non-Arab countries with significant Muslim populations, Israel has gone a long way towards achieving normal relations with nations like Ethiopia, Nigeria and India. Then, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Israel managed to gain the friendship of newly-independent Muslim republics of Central Asia such as Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. The president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Massoud Barzani, went so far in 2006 as to say: “It is not a crime to have relations with Israel.”

But times change. The accession of Recep Tayyip Erdogan as Turkish prime minister in 2003 brought with it a sharp deterioration in relations with Israel. Rooted as he is in hard-line Islamism, Erdogan immediately began courting favour with the Muslim world, and support for the extremist terrorist organisations Hamas and Hezbollah began to dominate Turkey’s approach to foreign affairs. Naturally enough, Israel’s reaction was to extend the periphery doctrine concept, namely to seek − and, indeed, achieve − a closer relationship with Turkey’s long-standing opponent, Greece.

In pursuit of this wider interpretation of the doctrine Israel, building on the growth of its high-tech economy, has succeeded in the past decade in improving relations with a variety of countries including Korea, Singapore, and most notably, China and India.

How does the periphery doctrine look at present?

Israel was quick off the mark when the new, mainly Arab Muslim, republic of South Sudan proclaimed its independence in July 2011. Israel immediately recognised the new state and offered economic help. Before the end of the month Israel and South Sudan had sealed full diplomatic relations.

Perhaps the delicate refurbishing of relations with Indonesia best exemplifies how the alliance of the periphery has been nurtured and developed. During the past year, after five years of sensitive deliberations, Indonesia agreed a sort of informal upgrade in its relations with Israel. It agreed to open a consulate in Ramallah, headed by a diplomat with the rank of ambassador, who will also unofficially serve as his country’s ambassador for contacts with Israel. The move represents a de facto upgrading of relations between Israel and the world’s most populous Muslim country. Formally Indonesia presents the move as a demonstration of its support for Palestinian independence. In fact, while the ambassador-ranked diplomat will be accredited to the Palestinian Authority, a significant portion of his work will be in dealings with Israel, and the office will fulfill substantial diplomatic duties as well as consular responsibilities. Meanwhile Israel and Indonesia quietly maintain trade, security and other relations, including tourism.

As for continental Africa, Israel has run extensive foreign aid and educational programs, sending in experts in agriculture, water management and health care. As a result it has built up some excellent working relationships – Angola, Cameroon and Eritrea, for example − though Ethiopia is perhaps its best partner. Fractured relations with Ghana were restored in 2009 following a state visit by the then Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Liberman, and diplomatic relations were resumed in September 2011.

But South Africa – an obvious target for the Periphery Doctrine − represents one of its major failures. A tide of delegitimisation seems about to overwhelm Israel in South Africa, and so far Israel has been unable to stem it. The ruling African National Congress party (ANC) has just adopted a policy of supporting anti-Israel boycotts, divestments and sanctions. This situation demands immediate attention from the new Israeli government before the leading state on the African continent sets itself up as Israel’s leading non-Arab opponent.

Nor will South Africa’s opposition to Israel necessarily be confined to its own government. South Africa is a leading member of the African Union (AU), whose summit conference has just ended, and its ANC representatives are in a position to cast a baleful influence on AU policies. It is of some comfort to Israel, perhaps, that at the summit the three-year chairmanship of the AU passed not to South Africa, as was at one time expected, but to Ethiopia, with whom − thanks to the Periphery Doctrine − Israel enjoys good relations.

Ben Gurion was far from infallible, but in his Periphery Doctrine – as in his advice to young Israelis of his day (“Go south, young man”) − time has surely proved that his instincts were sound.

Published in the Eurasia Review, 24 April 2013:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/24042013-israels-network-of-friends-oped/

Post-election Israel and the peace process

Discount the immediate response of Palestinian Authority (PA) spokesmen to the outcome of Israel’s election: “nothing has changed”. Much has changed. It is pretty clear that Israel’s next government, whoever may lead it and whatever its final composition, will contain as a vital component the 19 elected members of Yesh Atid (There is a Future) − a party dedicated to negotiating a two-state solution with the PA. Its leader, Yair Lapid, has said specifically: “Yesh Atid will not join a government that will not conduct diplomatic negotiations.” Given Israel’s political realities, a coalition without Yesh Atid does not seem feasible.

For the past two years PA President Abbas has been demanding a freeze on construction in the West Bank as one precondition for resuming peace negotiations – one, it might be noted, among several which have varied from time to time. This building issue has been a useful red herring for Abbas, fearful of moving too far and too fast, doubtless mindful of the fate of a previous Arab leader who did just that – Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat. After all, who would willingly put their head on a chopping block?

The current political configuration bears a certain resemblance to that of four years ago. As now, in early 2009 both President Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu had just come into office. Then, in response to Obama’s urgent request, Netanyahu succeeded in persuading his newly formed right-wing coalition to agree a freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank. In the event a 10-month building moratorium began at the end of November 2009. Most of the subsequent ten months was spent in shilly-shallying by Abbas, who sought cover from the Arab League for every tiny step he took. Much of the time was wasted in so-called “proximity talks”, with President Obamas’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, scurrying from side to side, trying to build confidence between the parties.

When finally Abbas was persuaded to come to the negotiating table for direct face-to-face talks with Israel, all but three weeks of the 10-month building moratorium had been used up. To reach this point Abbas had required not only the good offices of the United States and the support of the Arab League, but also the physical presence at the table of Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan’s King Abdullah. Once there, optimism ran riot among all the participants. Extravagant claims were voiced on all sides of a final settlement of the Israel-Palestine dispute within twelve months.

It proved too much for Abbas. As the leader of Fatah, he was in principle dedicated to wresting back mandate Palestine in toto from Israel, but the party was also in bitter conflict with the extremist terrorist organisation, Hamas, that had seized power in Gaza and was battling with Fatah for the hearts and minds of the Palestinian people. Seizing the imminent end of Israel’s 10-month construction freeze as a handy excuse, Abbas demanded a resumption of the moratorium as a pre-condition for continuing the peace discussions. This was a price that Netanyahu’s coalition could not deliver. The result: a two-year stalemate in the peace process that only a radical change in the political landscape could alter.

Such a change has indeed taken place, and not only in Israel following the general election. Abbas himself is very differently placed from where he was in 2010. Under his belt he now has the endorsement of the UN General Assembly to his request that Palestine be considered a state with “non-member status.” He has, moreover, once again come to some sort of patched-up agreement with Hamas, brokered by Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi, that will nominally lead to new PA elections covering Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Whether this arrangement will indeed hold on this occasion is problematic, given the many previous attempts at healing the Fatah-Hamas rift that have failed. On this occasion, however, Hamas may feel that they would emerge from elections much strengthened, in view of their self-designated “victory” following Israel’s latest incursion into Gaza, Operation Pillar of Defense.

Some people know Mahmoud Abbas very well, following meetings, discussions and negotiations sometimes extending over years. Among such are Israel’s President, Shimon Peres, former foreign minister Tzipi Livni, and former prime minister, Ehud Olmert. When Abbas in a recent TV interview, said quite unequivocally, “I believe that the West Bank and Gaza is Palestine, and the other parts are Israel.” each of those who are very well acquainted with him welcomed the statement as a courageous act by a man they believed was a genuine partner for peace.

A new Israeli government with members dedicated to renewing negotiations with the PA (even, one supposes, if some sort of construction freeze were called for), a Mahmoud Abbas strengthened by both a UN triumph and a possible healing of the bitter internal Palestinian feud − from such disparate elements as these it may be possible to resurrect a peace process that, while guaranteeing Israel the security it must have, would lay the foundation for a peaceful future for all the inhabitants of this unsettled corner of the world.

Published in the on-line editions of the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Report, 30 January 2013:
http://www.jpost.com/JerusalemReport/Israel/Article.aspx?id=301524&prmusr=GI9lUPj5SElGlL0JyJfczVwb8cx%2b9Cf64Cp0HpmLu1fLatPL3DNe9oZdzQ6R4XBa

Mali points the way

2013 has opened with a quite astonishing and heartening development. Against all the odds, and quite at variance with precedent, the civilised world has pretty well unanimously agreed to take a determined stand against one display of Islamist extremism.

Nothing in the recent past could have suggested that a European power − in this case, France − would have deployed its formidable military capability against a group of Islamist jihadists intent on seizing power in the West African republic of Mali. Nor that this action by its former colonial masters would have received the unanimous support of the government of the country, the UN Security Council and the European Union. Nor, indeed, that the British government would go so far in support of France as to put C-17 transport planes of the Royal Air Force at France’s disposal and speak of providing training and support for the Malian army.

Yes, self-interest is at stake. Last March, Tuareg tribesmen and members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb seized control of the northern part of the country. Last week they moved south, taking Konna and threatening Mopti, home to the only army garrison between them and the capital, Bamako. With a civilian administration controlled by a small, weak army, Mali must have seemed to Islamist extremists as vulnerable and ripe for a takeover. Once in their control, the country could be used as a springboard for attacks not only on other African states, especially Nigeria, but also on Europe. It is clearly a strategic priority for the civilised world that the insurgents are defeated, and that more moderate Tuareg elements regain power and resume a democratic form of government.

It has taken this particular example of Islamist ruthlessness to precipitate a decisive response. But extreme Islamism has been active for decades in its global jihad against Western values, and the West has turned a blind eye. For example no country stirred a finger when the Islamist terrorist organisation, Hamas − an offspring of Egypt’s extremist Muslim Brotherhood (MB) − seized power in 2008 in the Gaza strip, in a bloody fratricidal coup against fellow Palestinians.

The MB and its Islamist and al-Qaeda-backed adherents have flourished in the wake of the Arab Spring, and governments affected adversely by their current upsurge in confidence include Algeria of course - as the hostage bloodbath in that benighted country has just proved - but also Kuwait, Sudan, Somalia, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Jordan – to name only some. Wherever it manifests itself, the MB and its associates are dedicated to the tenets set out originally by its founder, Hassan al-Banna, in 1928. He declared, quite simply: “It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.”

That is the agenda of these Islamist militants. That is why this often stealthy, but steady and sure, expansion of influence and activity should concern the Western world far more than it has done up till now. For the MB not only spans the Middle East but, as political author Lorenzo Vidino has demonstrated, since the early 1960s its members and sympathisers have “moved to Europe and slowly but steadily established a wide and well-organised network of mosques, charities and Islamic organisations”. Islamism has active branches in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and a variety of other European countries. Seeking to bring about their Islamic aspirations through political means, the MB’s motto is: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Koran is our law. Jihad is our way. And death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our ambitions.” Its goal, stated quite openly by its leaders, is to create situations in which Sharia law can be imposed on states, with the aim eventually of uniting them and thus continuing the expansion of Islamism.

This is precisely what the insurgents in Mali − known as the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (NMLA) − have done in the ministate they have established in the north of the country. An extreme form of Sharia has been imposed. Refugees in the 92,000-person camp at Mbera, Mauritania, describe the Islamists as "intent on imposing an Islam of lash and gun on Malian Muslims."

So the West has reason enough to seek to defeat this al-Qaeda–backed insurgence in Mali, and to re-establish a legitimate civil government. On this occasion France’s President François Hollande has led the way, and the rest of the civilised world has not demurred. The question is: does President Hollande’s determined action mark the beginning of a more resolute response by the West to other examples of Islamist extremism, as they manifest themselves in the Middle East and elsewhere? Will others be similarly stalwart in defence of Western values? Or is this decisive action, welcome as it is, a flash in the pan?

Time will tell.

Published in the on-line Jerusalem Post magazine, 17 January 2013:
http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Opinion/Article.aspx?id=299881&prmusr=5wfdFn35AmwtiXkDhcVrZTzf9OR7ql7wbuVqEac6JejPxqBC3YAC%2bW81Z8%2bf8acD

Israel, Palestine and the International Criminal Court

There’s a fairly widespread feeling that one of the Palestinian Authority’s (PA’s) main motives in seeking an upgrade of its status at the UN recently, was to enable it to haul Israeli officials before the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of war crimes committed during Israel’s first – and possibly also its second − Gaza incursion.

Throughout the three weeks of Operation Cast Lead the broadcast media was out in force, capturing the horrors of war for the world’s television sets. Soon charges were being levelled against the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) from the usual sources of “disproportionate” military activity. It was not long before they turned into accusations of war crimes. On the day after hostilities ceased − 22 January 2009 − the PA submitted a declaration to the International Criminal Court accepting its jurisdiction for “acts committed on the territory of Palestine”.

This initiative was seen by world opinion as the first stage in a bid to indict Israeli officials for actions committed during Operation Cast Lead. It failed on purely technical grounds.

The powers of the ICC, which came into being under the Rome Statute on 1 July 2002, are constrained in a number of ways: It has no jurisdiction in respect of crimes committed before the ICC itself came into existence; its jurisdiction can be activated only by sovereign states; it can investigate crimes only in states that have signed the Rome Statute. Any state that is not party to the Statute can accept the jurisdiction of the ICC with respect to crimes committed on its territory. This is the crack through which the PA sought to squeeze itself. But the PA was not a sovereign state, and having considered its request for three years, in April 2012 the ICC prosecutor rejected it and referred the issue back to the UN Secretary General.

However, on 29 November 2012 the UN General Assembly voted in favour of recognizing Palestine as a state with observer status, even though a non-member of the UN. It is generally agreed − although not, perhaps, by the PA − that this resolution had no power to create a Palestinian state. Even so, it may cause the newly appointed ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda of Gambia, to reconsider her predecessor’s opinion.

Why? Because in rejecting the PA’s application, her predecessor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, cited the UN General Assembly as the final authority for deciding who a “state” is for the purposes of filing a case with the ICC. Moreover, he indicated that his decision was influenced by the fact that the PA had only “observer” status within the UN – implying that if it had been a “non-member observer state” his decision might have gone the other way.

So it remains a possibility that the ICC will agree to accept the PA’s request to submit itself to the jurisdiction of the court. If so, could the PA in fact initiate a criminal action against Israel?

As far as Operation Cast Lead is concerned, the two external inquiries each originally castigated Israel severely, and each subsequently had its main charges substantially modified.

The board of inquiry set up by UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, ignored the eight years of attacks against Israel and Hamas’s methods of armed operation which put Palestinian civilians at risk, and found the IDF was responsible for death, injuries and damage in seven of the nine incidents it investigated. In his response, sent to the UN Security Council, Ban Ki-moon made it clear that he took a different view. He criticized the firing of rockets at Israeli towns, and praised the coordination between the IDF and the UN during Operation Cast Lead and during the inquiry itself.

The UN-appointed Fact Finding Mission led by South African jurist Richard Goldstone, was set up to investigate alleged violations of human rights during the Gaza War. Its report accused both the IDF and the Palestinian militants of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. Lo and behold, on 1 April 2011 Goldstone published a personal retraction in The Washington Post, noting that subsequent investigations "indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy". He concluded: "If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document."

All of which would seem to cut the ground from beneath the PA’s feet, should it seriously consider hauling Israel before the ICC in respect of Operation Cast Lead. As regards Israel’s latest sharp lesson to Hamas, Pillar of Defense, the operation and the outcome resulted generally in a more even-handed account in the world’s media of the initial provocation and the subsequent Israeli reaction. There seems little of substance to place before the ICC.

Assuming, however, that the PA persists, and that the ICC prosecutor accepts it as a competent party, two questions remain. What are its chances of success, and is there anything Israel could do in response?

As regards the former, the ground rules of the Rome Statute are explicit: “If a state becomes a party to this statute after its entry into force, the Court may exercise its jurisdiction only with respect to crimes committed after the entry into force of this Statute for that State….” The PA’s declaration was made on the day after Operation Cast Lead ended. It seems clear that the ICC could not consider alleged crimes committed before that day.

Is there any counter action Israel could take? If Palestine is eventually considered by the ICC to be a state, Palestinians could be indicted for crimes committed on their own soil which, let us recall, the UN General Assembly assumed to include Gaza. The rockets fired indiscriminately from Gaza at Israel’s civilian population centres almost certainly constitute crimes against humanity. Israel and the United States have withdrawn from the Rome Statute, but nothing in the Statute says that a state referring charges to a prosecutor must be a party to the treaty.

The PA needs to beware. If it persists in pursuing its action, it may be opening a Pandora’s box.

Published in the on-line Jerusalem Post magazine, 14 January 2013:
http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Opinion/Article.aspx?id=299516&prmusr=66YhTv%2ffH6d51TvX%2b5pYdH5bqVZH8tD7A4qW0fI%2feJcaV6V6nvH2g3lsY5fU%2fvJj

Hamas flexes its muscles

There’s a great deal of talk these days about a “reconciliation” between Hamas and Fatah. In December the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) allowed Hamas to celebrate its 25th anniversary in the West Bank; last Friday Hamas permitted a rally in Gaza city to commemorate Fatah’s “launch of the revolution” 48 years ago. Buoyed up by recent self-proclaimed “successes” on both sides (Hamas has deluded itself into believing it won a great victory in the recent Operation Pillar of Defense; the PA regards its recent vote in the UN General Assembly as tantamount to achieving a sovereign Palestinian state), there is now much loose talk of “moving forward towards unity”, in the words of Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri.

However the underlying truth is that Hamas and Fatah are irreconcilable, for Hamas is concerned above all with outflanking Fatah in the battle for Palestinian hearts and minds. It refuses to accept Mahmoud Abbas as the legitimate president of the PA, to endorse the PA’s policy of seeking to establish a sovereign Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, or even to acknowledge Israel’s existence. So it is unlikely that current efforts at reconciliation will achieve anything more than the many previous abortive attempts.

On the contrary, strange rumours have been circulating about Hamas in the past few months.

They were sparked off shortly after the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) won its convincing victory in Egypt’s parliamentary elections, and the MB candidate, Mohamed Morsi, topped the poll for president. Hamas, founded in 1987 during the first intifada, was an offshoot of the Egyptian MB, set up with the specific aim of establishing an Islamic state in the whole of the area that is now Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. The overwhelming success of the Brotherhood in what is arguably the leading nation in the Arab world − and Gaza’s next door neighbour to boot − must have seemed to the Hamas leadership like a golden opportunity too good to miss.

Accordingly, in July 2012, very shortly after Morsi took over as Egypt’s president, Arab newspapers like Al-Arabiya and Al-Hayat reported a meeting between Gaza prime minister Ismail Haniyeh and President Morsi. The subject of their discussion, according to the reports, was the possibility of Hamas issuing a unilateral declaration of independence − in short, breaking away from the PA and establishing an Islamic Palestinian state in the Gaza strip, possibly under the benign overlordship of an MB Egyptian government. Khaled Mesmar, head of the Political Committee at the Palestinian National Council, was reported at the time as saying: “Hamas is trying to garner as much support as possible for the idea of secession, especially among several Arab regimes.”

Clearly the proposal – if indeed it was made in the terms reported − was not to President Morsi’s liking, for no such move followed. However subsequent events further strengthened Hamas to a degree that the leadership could not have foreseen back in July, and may have led to renewed efforts in that direction.

Emboldened by the MB’s success in Egypt, and also by the growing confidence of jihadists elsewhere as a result of the Arab Spring, Hamas began stepping up its rocket attacks on Israeli civilian targets. Israel’s reaction, in the form of Operation Pillar of Defense, gave Hamas the opportunity to stand for eight days at the centre of the world stage, representing the so-called “Palestinian armed struggle”. As a result Hamas greatly enhanced its standing in Arab popular opinion.

Riding the crest of this popular acclaim, the latest story to surface concerning Hamas is a statement made in the last days of 2012 by senior Hamas official, Musa Abu Marzouk, a likely candidate to replace Khaled Mashaal as head of the organisation. A frustrated President Abbas had been reported as saying that if there was no progress in the peace process: “I will take the phone and call Netanyahu and tell him : ‘Sit in the chair instead of me, take the keys, and you will be responsible for the Palestinian Authority’.” Abu Marzouk riposted: “Why does Abbas want to hand the keys over to Netanyahu? Why not hand it over to Hamas?” Hamas’s record, he asserted, “qualified it to run the West Bank successfully.”

Fatah officials are reported to have reacted angrily. Jamal Muheisen, a member of the Fatah Central Council, claimed that Hamas was renewing its pursuit of a unilateral declaration of independence for Gaza − though now, he asserted, Hamas had turned from seeking to do so under Egyptian auspices, and was conducting secret negotiations with Israel, with US approval, aimed at establishing an Islamic emirate in the Gaza strip. The West Bank, claimed Muheisen, was to be left as cantonised pockets of Palestinians separated by the Israeli settlements.

So the rumoured claim − which has about it the hallmarks of paranoid fears by an embattled Fatah − seems to be that Israel is prepared to allow the Gaza strip to become an extreme Islamist Palestinian state in its own right, and for Hamas to take over from the PA as the ruling authority in Palestinian-occupied West Bank areas, provided they leave all Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria under Israeli control.

The whole story seems wildly improbable, starting with the idea of secret Israel-Hamas negotiations. Even more unlikely is the concept of an Israel-approved takeover by Hamas of areas of the West Bank, however tempting the kickback. Hamas’s objective, its very raison d’être, is undisguised – the elimination of Israel, and the establishment of an Islamist Palestine “from the river to the sea”. To permit Hamas to assume control of parts of Judea and Samaria would indeed amount to Israel clutching a viper to its bosom.

This, surely, is one rumour too far.

Published in the on-line Jerusalem Post magazine, 6 January 2013:
http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Opinion/Article.aspx?id=298576&prmusr=%2bYE0NSFs3v9vHObbbYiRaIKLPF%2by7DFM1BRbpcXTc%2b7qjfGeQpl74BEYIUVQNh5D

An Israeli-Palestinian meeting of minds

We hear a great deal about the issues that separate Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA). A question asked less often is: how much overlap is there between them?

If the vast range of opinion within the Israeli body politic were to be taken into account, the question would become meaningless. Within Israel one can find strands of political opinion well to the right of Ghengis Khan and well to the left of anything Mahmoud Abbas has yet articulated. The only practical approach is to assume that Israel’s position is that currently adopted by its democratically elected government − the government led by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. If opinion polls have any validity, this seems likely to remain the situation after the forthcoming general election.

The position of the PA must be taken as that publicly stated by its current President, Mahmoud Abbas, to non-Arab audiences. There is no denying that like his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, he has made directly contradictory statements for domestic consumption, and the gap between his two positions is wide indeed − so wide that he would face a problem in carrying Palestinian public opinion with him in any substantive peace negotiations. Nor is there much point in referring back to the founding charter of Fatah, Abbas’s party, where the ultimate objective is clearly the elimination of Israel. History has its place in the overall scheme of things, but politics is a game for the here and now.

It is equally of little value to place too much emphasis on the total rejectionism of Hamas, the extreme Islamist de facto government of the Gaza strip. The apparently irreconcilable split between Hamas and Fatah certainly weakens Abbas’s position on the world stage, but curiously it is also one of the factors binding the PA and Israel together. Both parties would like nothing better than to see the PA re-establish its authority in Gaza, although neither is prepared to do very much about it. Cooperation has so far been confined to countering attempts by Hamas to gain a foothold in the West Bank. To go further would involve Abbas in a damaging loss of credibility with the Palestinian man-in-the-street. Indeed, he pays lip service to the concept of a reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, but the two are chalk and cheese as regards an acceptable strategy towards Israel. Hamas refuses to recognise Israel’s right to exist; Abbas has taken to asserting it.

It is an undoubted fact that both Israel and the PA are publicly committed to the two-state solution. Netanyahu declared his support for the concept in a speech at Bar-Ilan University in 2009, as well as when he addressed the US Congress in May 2011. He reiterated his position in a letter he sent to Mahmoud Abbas a year later, following the establishment of his national unity government.

Speaking to the joint meeting of the US Congress, Netanyahu said:

“Two years ago, I publicly committed to a solution of two states for two peoples − a Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state. I am willing to make painful compromises to achieve this historic peace. This is not easy for me. I recognize that we will be required to give up parts of the Jewish homeland in Judea and Samaria. The Jewish people are not foreign occupiers. This is the land of our forefathers, the Land of Israel, to which Abraham brought the idea of one God. No distortion of history can deny the four thousand year old bond between the Jewish people and the Jewish land. But there is another truth: The Palestinians share this small land with us. We seek a peace in which they will be neither Israel's subjects nor its citizens. They should enjoy a national life of dignity as a free, viable and independent people in their own state.”

For his part, Abbas was widely quoted following his interview on Israeli TV in November 2012: “Palestine for me is the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital…the West Bank and Gaza is Palestine, everything else is Israel.”

Before the end of the month, he was addressing the UN General Assembly, asking for Palestine to be recognised as a non-member state. He said: “We did not come here seeking to delegitimize a state established years ago, and that is Israel; rather we came to affirm the legitimacy of the state that must now achieve its independence, and that is Palestine. We will accept no less than the independence of the State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, on all the Palestinian territory occupied in 1967, to live in peace and security alongside the State of Israel, and a solution for the refugee issue as per the operative part of the Arab Peace Initiative.”

The differences between the stated positions of Israel and the PA seem paper thin. Why then has the peace process been in the deep-freeze for so long? Perhaps because both leaders are well aware that peace is a dangerous game, and that there are lunatic extremists in both camps. After all, each has a chilling reminder of predecessors who moved too far or too fast. It would require exceptional courage on the Palestinian side to stand up and do what the late president of Egypt, Anwar Saddat, did – to say 'It’s over, enough with the bloodshed.' And no doubt Netanyahu also has the fate of his predecessor as Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, in mind from time to time. So, yes, caution is to be commended, but caution to the point of immobility has brought us to the present impasse.

Paralysis of the peace process may suit the leadership of both parties, but opinion polls reveal that the majority of Israelis and Palestinians favour an end to the conflict and the chance to live in peace, side by side. The result of two parallel polls released this morning indicate that two-thirds of Israelis would support a peace agreement with the Palestinians, if a referendum on such an accord were held by Israel's government.
There is the true meeting of minds.

Published in the on-line Jerusalem Post magazine, 31 December 2012:
http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Opinion/Article.aspx?id=297893&prmusr=GXokTcT0zioTfoE%2b3dpsygaSZbB7ycZM23zRZHZQM3PCNzfbkRvx1BEYIUVQNh5D

The UK and Israel in 2013

Israelis tend to regard the UK − or “Anglia” as they persist in calling it in Hebrew (a politically incorrect term in the UK these days to describe the nation) − with a jaundiced eye, for historically the relationship between Britain and Israel has been bitter-sweet.

For some the bitterness outweighs the sweetness: Britain’s failure to fulfil its League of Nation’s mandate to establish a Jewish National Home in the inter-war years, its failure to affect the course of the Holocaust as it progressed, even to the extent of refusing to bomb the Auschwitz crematoria, its heartless treatment of Jewish refugees seeking to enter Palestine after the war.

Some take a kinder view. They recall that Britain, a global super-power in 1917, was first to acknowledge the Jewish people’s historic connection to the Holy Land, and to declare to the world that it was in favour of establishing a national home for them in Palestine. They remember Lord Allenby for his conquest of Palestine and his capture of Jerusalem, and also, with affection, the Christian Zionist General Orde Wingate, a founder of the Israel Defense Forces, known to the Jewish troops he commanded as “The Friend”. They remember the “kindertransport” − the rescue mission during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, when the UK took in nearly 10,000 Jewish children fleeing Nazi Germany.

The problem with Britain’s relationship with the Zionist movement, and later with Israel, has always been Britain’s need, in its own self-interest as it saw it, to maintain good relations also with as much of the Arab world as possible – and especially with the oil-rich Arab states. The resultant balancing act has led to many a wobble.

What are Israel’s prospects for a strong supportive UK in 2013?

Judging by remarks made by Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, earlier this month, they are − with just a few reservations − excellent. To deal with the reservations: Britain’s primary need in 2013 will be to trade its way out of recession, and this may well lead to stronger economic ties with a range of Middle Eastern states. For example, only last week Britain announced a multi-billion pound defence deal with Oman; other such deals are in the offing as Gulf states become increasingly nervous about Iranian ambitions and the rise of extreme Islamism on the back of the Arab Spring. As regards the Arab Spring, the UK seems as hypnotised as the USA with the idea that somehow democracy will leap, fully-fledged, from the flames of revolution. That the white-heat of rebellion might result in the accession of extremist Islamist governments – like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt − is, for the moment at least, largely discounted.

The good news is to learn that the UK’s prime minister said – as he did on 11 December − “I’m not an acquaintance of Israel. I’m not a colleague of Israel. I am a passionate friend of Israel – and that’s the way it’s going to stay.”

David Cameron was unrestrained in his admiration for Israeli achievement in a whole variety of fields.

“Israel is growing faster than Russia – and almost twice as fast as Brazil. It’s got more start-up businesses per head than any other country. The big question is: how do they do it? Yes, it’s about Israel getting its debts down, investing in education, signing free trade agreements, but it’s more than that – it’s about the aspiration and drive of its people. These are people who have innovated around every problem that life has thrown at them. The land is dry - so they come up with new water technology. There’s little oil – so they find other energy alternatives. So we want to work much more closely with Israel – on innovation, on technology.”

It seems, therefore, that in 2013 Britain will be seeking ever closer ties with Israel in terms of trade and of scientific and technical innovation. As an earnest of that intention, Cameron announced the appointment of the UK’s first technology envoy to Israel, Saul Klein − someone, he said. “with huge experience in early-stage investment.”

Turning to the search for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, Cameron believes that the only way to secure long term peace and security is the two-state solution.

“To me it is clear what needs to happen. We need the US administration to give this priority. We need Europe to act even-handedly. We need the Palestinians to understand there is only one path to statehood, and that is through negotiations with Israel. We made that clear with that UN vote a couple of weeks ago. We said that Britain could not support a resolution that set back the prospects for peace and that did not commit the Palestinians to return to negotiations without preconditions. So we did not vote for it.”

On the other hand, it might be observed, the UK did not vote against it, either. Balancing, as ever, on the wobbly high wire, the UK abstained.

On Iran, Cameron believes that the regime must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons, but that the policy of sanctions is working, that the Tehran régime is cracking. Nevertheless, he said : “if Iran makes the wrong choice, nothing – and I mean nothing - is off the table.” 2013 might be the crunch year for military action.

Cameron concluded: “I look forward to the day when the relationship between Britain and Israel is about prosperity more than about security, to the day when the Jewish people can see the future not with uncertainty but with hope, and as a friend of Israel I will work with you till that day comes.”

Not a bad prospect for UK-Israeli relations.

Published in the on-line Jerusalem Post magazine, 26 December 2012:
http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Opinion/Article.aspx?id=297360&prmusr=vT3bMqUoEBW1ADDe231BrXb4WTOQj%2fpcj8JXWD%2boZddw5JMnWeYki4ZdzQ6R4XBa

The Arab Peace Plan - not quite clinically dead

At the end of November the London-based Arab daily, Al-Sharq il-Awsat, reported that the king of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, following complicated back surgery, was clinically dead. So far, the story has not been confirmed − and one might hope that reports of the king's death are greatly exaggerated and that he is making a good recovery − but mention of Abdullah inevitably brings to mind that he was the instigator of one of the most surprising episodes in the long-drawn-out Arab-Israeli dispute.

A summit conference of the Arab League had been arranged for March 2002 in Beirut. At that time Abdullah was Saudi’s Crown Prince, although he had been effectively ruling the kingdom on behalf of his ailing father, King Fahd, since 1996. On the 20th of March, a few days ahead of the summit, he electrified the assembled Arab foreign ministers by floating a peace plan for Palestine-Israel.

Basically, he called for peace with Israel in return for Israel withdrawing from all territories captured in the 1967 war. There was a significant condition: a "just settlement" of the Palestinian refugee crisis based on UN Resolution 194 (a sort of "right of return" or, for those who do not want to go back, agreed compensation). However, Abdullah did not specify whether refugees, now perhaps including third or fourth generation descendants of those who left the region in 1948, were to be "returned" to Israel or to the Palestinian state that would be created. The plan was discussed for a week, amendments were incorporated (notably a clause which prevented the 350,000 or more Palestinians living in Lebanon claiming Lebanese citizenship), and it was adopted on the 28th of March 2002. The Arab League has since readopted the Initiative on several occasions, notably at the Riyadh summit in 2007.

The quid pro quo for Israel’s agreement to the plan would be that all 22 Arab States would consider the Arab–Israeli conflict over, sign a peace agreement and establish normal relations with Israel.

Israel has never made an official response to the proposals, but reactions have divided as might be expected between right- and left-wing political opinion. Following the Riyadh summit, Benjamin Netanyahu, then leader of the opposition, rejected the plan outright; previous prime minister Ehud Olmert expressed reservations, but welcomed the initiative as a "new way of thinking. The willingness to recognize Israel as an established fact,” he said, “and to debate the conditions of the future solution, is a step that I can't help but appreciate."

Perhaps the median view was set out by Israel's president, Shimon Peres. He applauded the "U-turn" in the Arab attitude towards peace with Israel as reflected in the Saudi initiative, though "Israel wasn't a partner to the wording … it doesn't have to agree to every word."

In March 2009, shortly after President Obama took office for the first time, and optimism was the order of the day, George Mitchell, the US special envoy to the Middle East, announced that the new administration intended to "incorporate" the Saudi initiative into its Middle East policy. That intention has never been clarified, and if it has indeed been implemented, it has been done without much of a fanfare.

Now we learn that Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is urging the Arab League not to withdraw its 2002 peace plan, since he himself is planning to call for renewed negotiations with Israel for six months, on condition that Israel freezes construction in West Bank settlements and east Jerusalem during that time. How he intends to reconcile this initiative with his other stated intention to seek a reconciliation with Hamas, the de facto government in the Gaza strip, he does not specify. In fact it is a circle that is impossible to square. As Hamas’s leader, Khaled Mashaal, made perfectly clear during his visit to Gaza, the destruction of Israel remains his goal. Negotiations, peace initiatives, recognition of Israel − all are anathema to Mashaal and the terrorist organisation he leads.

Abbas cannot both run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. His apparent attempt to do so leads to the inevitable conclusion that this is yet another of his moves calculated to generate favorable world media attention, but actually designed to circumvent any genuine effort to reach an accommodation with Israel.

The Arab Spring was initially seen by the West as the Arab masses clamouring for democracy and throwing off the shackles of dictatorship. The reality has proved rather different. Jihadists and other Islamist extremists like the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) have used the various national rebellions to stir the pot of disaffection and advance their particular cause. The MB, still holding the reins of power in Egypt, is at one with its progeny, Hamas, in its basic objective regarding Israel – namely it seeks Israel’s ultimate elimination. It is perhaps significant that while the advance text of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi’s address to the United Nations on September 26, included an endorsement of the Arab peace plan − that section was omitted from his speech. Instead he simply endorsed Palestinian statehood without stating whether his vision would accommodate Israel or not.

And yet, if there is a pinprick of light in the dark tunnel in which Israeli-Arab relations now find themselves, it is perhaps Abdullah’s bold initiative in 2002 − for audacious, even its greatest detractors must allow it to have been. The fact that it is still referred to, by friend and foe alike, proves that it is not yet totally dead in the water.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line magazine, 17 December 2012:
http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Opinion/Article.aspx?id=296281&prmusr=ebTS%2feM%2b8JUg4WthNYj4cQdnvDI3wENvGU2%2brD1BcRA4E32rGZnO%2fNyAlGXZecXk

Construction in the West Bank - how illegal is it?

World opinion, led by the Obama administration, is in no doubt.

“These activities set back the cause of a negotiated peace,” was US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s immediate reaction when the Israeli government authorised the construction of 3000 new homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, following the Palestinians winning their bid in the UN General Assembly to become a "non-member observer state".

She did not use the world “illegal”, but Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, was less inhibited in his condemnation.

"I am extremely concerned by reports that the Israeli cabinet plans to approve the building of 3,000 new housing units in illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israeli settlements are illegal under international law... The UK strongly advises the Israeli government to reverse this decision.”

Hague summoned to the Foreign Office Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Daniel Taub, to convey the government’s displeasure in person. Hague’s move in calling in the Israeli ambassador was followed by France and Sweden. Australia and Brazil followed suit.

That the West Bank and Gaza are Palestinian land, that Israel has no legal right to any of it, and that all settlements built on land that Israel did not occupy before the 1967 war, including east Jerusalem, are illegal in international law − all this is now taken for granted by a kind of generalised world consensus. On its website the BBC, obligated by its Charter to impartiality, sets out the case both for and, in somewhat mealy-mouthed fashion, against:

“It is widely accepted that under international law, the Jewish settlements in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 are illegal. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the protection of civilian persons in time of war states: ‘The occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own population into the territories it occupies.’ Within the international community the overwhelming view is that Article 49 is applicable to the occupation of the West Bank including East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights…Israel is a party to the Geneva Conventions, and bound by its obligations.

“But its government argues that the international conventions relating to occupied land do not apply to the Palestinian territories because they were not under the legitimate sovereignty of any state in the first place… Israel therefore denies the formal, de jure, applicability of the 4th Geneva Convention in the occupied territories.”

As for these territories belonging to the Palestinians, Israel would argue that no Palestinian state existed in 1967, nor does it today, despite the recent UN General Assembly vote. What does exist are the Oslo Accords, negotiated between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority (PA) as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”. Under the Accords the issue of settlements was to be decided in the permanent status negotiations. None of the agreements signed between the parties contain any limitation on building by the parties in the areas under their respective jurisdictions.

One legal opinion holds that while Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits "individual or mass forcible transfers" of civilians, this has not happened, and is not happening, in the territories under Israeli administration. Further, under Article 49 the Occupying Power is obliged not to "deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population" to territories under its control, and that there has been no such active or forcible deportation or transfer of Israeli civilians. On the other hand, it is opined, Article 49 does not oblige Israel to prevent voluntary settlement by its civilian population.

More broadly, the case has been made by international lawyers that Judea and Samaria legally belong to Israel and the Jewish people under international law. Professor Talia Einhorn, for example, is on the record as saying that Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip are all incorrectly categorized by the world community as “occupied,” because prior to Israel’s liberation of those areas in 1967 no sovereign power legally controlled them, while the original Mandate for Palestine − never revoked and still valid − designated those areas as part of the Jewish national home.

“From the standpoint of international law,” says Einhorn, “there is no essential difference between the areas on the two sides of the Green Line.” The last legally binding document to be adopted regarding the areas in question, she says, remains the 1920 San Remo resolution, which deeds full sovereignty to the Jewish people.

It has also been pointed out that Article 80 of the United Nations Charter, by recognizing the continuing validity of rights granted to all states or peoples under already existing international instruments, including those adopted by the League of Nations, protects Article 5 of the Mandate ("The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of, the Government of any foreign Power."}

It is time for a clear ruling, one way or the other. Either construction in the occupied areas under Israel’s jurisdiction is illegal, or Israel’s position on Article 49 of the Geneva Convention is valid. Where can an authoritative legal opinion be sought?

The International Court of Justice (ICJ), established under the UN charter, is composed of fifteen judges, each from a different nation. One of its main functions is to provide advisory opinions on legal questions. To clear the fog of confusion that surrounds this issue, there is surely a case for Israel applying to the ICJ for an opinion on whether the provisions of the Mandate survived the demise of the League of Nations, and on the legality or otherwise of its construction policies in the occupied territories.

Published in the on-line Jerusalem Post magazine, 11 December 2012:
http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Opinion/Article.aspx?id=295442&prmusr=x3CWBZkdZpodobqeOio2DhWjWHHRQ7XE1N2sMucxcBfo61pv7RgWpbCZQ%2boocCKh