Image 01 Image 03
Sign In or RegisterLogout

Middle East Tag

Posted by David Gerstman on January 01, 2015 3 Comments
Today the New York Times, predictably, blamed Israel for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' efforts to internationalize the Palestinians conflict with Israel. According to the Times, it is Israel's fault that Abbas attempted to get the United Nations Security Council to impose an agreement on Israel and, failing that, to apply to join the International Criminal Court (ICC). In an editorial today, The Palestinians' Desperation Move, the Times argues:
Mr. Abbas began this week by insisting that the Security Council approve a resolution to set a deadline for establishing a Palestinian state, including the phased withdrawal of Israeli forces from the West Bank by the end of 2017. After heavy lobbying by the United States and Israel, the resolution received only eight of the nine votes needed to pass in the 15-member council. The fact is, the United States, which voted against the measure, supports a Palestinian state. And France, which broke with the Americans and voted in favor, acknowledged reservations about some of the details. Following this defeat, Mr. Abbas moved swiftly on Wednesday to take an even more provocative step in joining the International Criminal Court, through which the Palestinians could bring charges against Israeli officials for cases against their settlement activities and military operations. While he was under strong pressure from his constituents to do this, he knew well the cost might be great. “There is aggression practiced against our land and our country, and the Security Council has let us down — where shall we go?” Mr. Abbas said at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Note that the Times describes these moves not as wrong, but as counterproductive.

Posted by David Gerstman on December 30, 2014 5 Comments
In a recent essay, Jonathan Spyer identified the likely approach the anti-Netanyahu coalition - specifically Isaac Herzog of Labor and Tzipi Livni of Hatnua - will take in preparation for the Israeli elections on March 17. Spyer writes, "The belief underlying the Israeli center-left’s campaign is evidently that if Israel is 'boxed in' it is because of its own 'extremists' and that the solution to this is greater accommodation to the U.S. administration." There's a problem with this approach, though: it may not resonate well with Israeli voters.
But if this is indeed to be the thrust of the center-left’s campaign in the elections, success is likely to continue to elude it. Israelis are deeply aware both of the threats that surround them, and of the cold attitude of the current U.S. administration toward their country. A campaign which seeks to blur or obscure these or to claim that they are largely of Israel’s own making is likely to win its proponents a further term in the opposition.
We only have to go back to last week, when Roger Cohen of the The New York Times published an interview with former Israeli peace negotiator Tzipi Livni, to see how true Spyer's assessment is. Livni, in the column, identifies Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud  Abbas as the one who torpedoed the American-sponsored peace process by failing to accept an American framework agreement, attempting to bolster a unilateral bid for statehood by signing international treaties and finally by agreeing to a unity government with Hamas. Yet even as Livni recounted Abbas refusal to negotiate in the middle of the op-ed, at the beginning and end of the article she asserts that only she and those aligned with her are moderates seeking peace. The problem is the disconnect between her accounting of Abbas' intransigence and her insistence that Likud is what's preventing peace is rather obvious. She can't convincingly claim that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the major obstacle to peace when she herself has documented how Abbas scuttled the American peace efforts.

Posted by David Gerstman on December 26, 2014 3 Comments
Prof. Jaccobson blogged yesterday about the tribulations of Israeli Member of Knesset Haneen Zoabi, who is privileged and free to serve in the legislature of the country that she reviles. But there's another Zoabi, in fact a distant cousin, who also has been in the news. Mohammad Zoabi. He's a teenager who describes himself as a "A Proud Israeli Arab Muslim Zionist." Mohammad first came to my attention when he released the video below, a plea to return Eyal Yifrach, Gil-ad Shaar and Naftali Fraenkel, in English, Hebrew and Arabic.

Posted by David Gerstman on December 25, 2014 3 Comments
Tzipi Livni, Israel's former peace negotiator, dropped a bombshell yesterday when she explained in an interview with New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, how Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas torpedoed the American sponsored peace process earlier this year. One would think that Abbas, who claims he wants a state for his people would try and negotiate one. Instead he took unilateral actions that alienated even the likes of Livni. For those who believe that the Palestinians would benefit from statehood, Abbas' behavior is incomprehensible. Why would Abbas pass up a chance to negotiate for a state for his people, something which conventional wisdom tells us would benefit not only the Palestinians, but the whole Middle East as well? (In fact. Abbas may be refusing to compromise with Israel because Palestinians don't want him to.) But that isn't the only recent report of Palestinian leaders putting their own concerns ahead of those of their people. Neri Zilber of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy wrote Gaza's Explosion Waiting to Happen for Politico earlier this week. The central part of Zilber's report focused on the infighting between Fatah and Hamas, that has delayed the rebuilding of Gaza. Fatah, for its part, is supposed to take control of Gaza, but as one Fatah official asked "How do you expect me to go work in the Gaza Strip 'when the Qassam Brigades [Hamas’s elite military wing] goes ahead of me in both power and weapons?'” Zilber summed up the issue:
Seven years of Hamas control over Gaza would be gradually replaced by the Fatah-dominated PA, billions of dollars in donor aid would flow in, and the Gazan people would be liberated from the continued rule of an internationally-designated terrorist organization (and the continued need for an Israeli and Egyptian blockade around the territory). Or at least that was the idea. But all these plans are on hold as Hamas and the PA engage in a game of political chicken, staring each other down , a reality confirmed to me over the past month in conversations with nearly two dozen Israeli and Palestinian officials (from both Fatah and Hamas), international diplomats and non-governmental sources based in Israel and the West Bank, some of whom requested to remain anonymous so as to speak more freely.

Posted by David Gerstman on December 24, 2014 1 Comment
In his column yesterday, anti-Israel columnist Roger Cohen of The New York Times talked to Tzipi Livni, candidate for prime minister and Israel's peace negotiator, about why the John Kerry-sponsored peace talks failed earlier this year. Livni tells of the three ways the Palestinians destroyed the peace talks. The administration in March had presented a framework for both sides.
Livni considered it a fair framework, and Netanyahu had indicated willingness to proceed on the basis of it while saying he had reservations. But Abbas declined to give an answer in what his senior negotiator, Saeb Erekat, later described as a “difficult” meeting with Obama. Abbas remained evasive on the framework, which was never made public.
One part of the framework was to accept the 1967 lines (really the 1948 armistice lines) as the basis of negotiations. In other words, Netanyahu made a major concession here and Abbas still refused to play ball. Still at the behest of the administration talks continued and a few weeks later, the Palestinians were at it again.
Then, Livni said, she looked up at a television as she awaited a cabinet meeting and saw Abbas signing letters as part of a process to join 15 international agencies — something he had said he would not do before the deadline.
Abbas offered the excuse that Israel was stalling. Still, this was a unilateral action outside the framework of negotiations and a broken promise. Finally, there was this:

Posted by David Gerstman on December 15, 2014 11 Comments
Following the dissolution of the Israeli government this week, Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog and Hatnua leader Tzipi Livni agreed to join forces in an effort to unseat Likud as the governing party. At The Times of Israel Haviv Rettig Gur wrote a positive analysis of the merger, arguing that in bringing Livni on board Herzog aimed to capture the center of the Israeli electorate, rather than ceding it to Likud.
Yet Israel’s political center is actually far larger than the parties who formally declare themselves to be “centrist.” On the key issue that defines the left-right axis, Palestinian statehood, polls have shown that as many as half of those who vote for the explicitly right-wing parties Likud, Yisrael Beytenu and even Jewish Home actually support Palestinian statehood. Countless polls suggest that Israeli centrists – usually defined by pundits as those who support Palestinian independence while distrusting Palestinian willingness to reciprocate with peace – vote for the right because they hear their skepticism reflected in the rhetoric of right-wing leaders. For 20 years, Herzog’s predecessors – Labor has seen 11 leadership changes in 22 years – have been fighting a losing battle against this vast, inchoate center. But on Wednesday night, Herzog launched the left’s most dramatic bid since the 1990s for the Israeli center’s trust.
Herzog, according to Gur, no longer talks about "peace and reconciliation" but of "separation." There are two assumptions to Gur's analysis here that I'm skeptical about.

Posted by David Gerstman on December 07, 2014 5 Comments
Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired his finance minister (Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid) and justice minister (Tzippi Livni of Hatnua), both coalition partners, effectively bringing down the current government and forcing new elections now scheduled for March 17. The latest polls suggest that Netanyahu would be able to form the next coaltion.
According to a Channel 10 poll, Likud would win 22 seats, Jewish Home 17, Labor 13, Yisrael Beytenu 12, Moshe Kahlon’s as-yet-unnamed party 12, Yesh Atid nine, the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism eight, Shas seven, Meretz seven, Hatnua four and the Arab parties nine. A survey by Channel 2 showed Likud with 22, Jewish Home 17, Labor 13, Kahlon and Yisrael Beytenu with 10 apiece, Yesh Atid with nine, Shas with nine, United Torah Judaism with eight, Meretz with seven, Hatnua with four, and the Arab parties with 11. Both polls would have made pleasant reading for Likud leader Netanyahu, showing a strengthening of the right, and numerous potential coalition options for him.
However, a lot can happen in four months. For example two years ago, Likud created a joint list with Yisrael Beiteinu (Avigdor Liberman's party) and then the combined list lost ten seats in popularity polls in the final month of the campaign.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 30, 2014 4 Comments
"Nakba" is the phrase Arabs use to refer to the creation of Arab refugees from the British Mandate of Palestine created during the civil war and then Arab armies invasion after Arabs rejected the U.N. General Assembly 1947 Partition Plan. Had the Arabs accepted that plan, there would have been an Arab state created in 1947.  Since Jordan was created from most of the original Mandate, the Partition Plan would have given Arabs the supermajority of the land.  Instead, the Arabs declared holy war on the Jews, and lost the civil war and 1948 War. In the course of that loss, hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled, then were kept in refugee camps by other Arabs, and have been kept as non-citizens in those Arab countries pending the destruction of Israel. The there was another "Nakba" resulting from the Arab rejection of Israel. The story of 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries has been told here many times, but rarely is discussed in the public debate over the Middle East. The silence on the Jewish Nakba is changing. Ben-Dror Yemini, writing in Ynet, What about the Jewish Nakba? (h/t Israel Matzav) writes:

Posted by David Gerstman on November 11, 2014 4 Comments
Two Israelis were killed yesterday in separate terror attacks by knife wielding assailants. Yesterday morning, a 20 year old soldier, Almog Shiloni, was stabbed in Tel Aviv. The Times of Israel reports:
Almog Shiloni, 20, of Modiin, died of multiple wounds to his stomach and chest, an official from the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer Hospital said. “After resuscitation efforts that began in the field and continued for hours in the hospital, the stabbing victim who arrived at the hospital earlier today was declared dead,” a spokesperson announced. When Shiloni was first brought into the hospital following the attack he had no pulse, although doctors were able to restart his heart.
His girlfriend, who was talking to him on the phone at the time, rushed to the scene when she heard a commotion and Almog didn't answer. When she arrived at the scene she saw "Almog lying in a pool of blood as emergency teams tried to resuscitate him." In the afternoon a 26 year old woman, Dalia Lemkus,  was stabbed to death and two others were wounded in a knife attack in Gush Etzion (the Etzion Bloc) by a terrorist who was shot and wounded by a security guard.
The stabber was shot by a guard on duty at the site, police said. Initial reports indicated he was killed, but later reports dispelled that claim. Magen David Adom said he was in serious condition. A 26-year-old man suffered light-moderate injuries, and a man in his 50s was lightly hurt in the incident. Their names were not released. Channel 2 reported that the older man was driving by the scene when he saw the attack in progress, then stopped his car and wrestled with the attacker before suffering an injury to his face.
Sherri Mandel, whose teenage son Kobi, was killed in 2001 during the so-called "Aqsa intifada," wrote a tribute to Lemkus, What the didn't tell you about Dalia, at The Times of Israel:

Posted by David Gerstman on November 10, 2014 3 Comments
With the Senate flipping from Democratic control to Republican control, the question emerges whether the legislature, now in the hands of the opposition, will be able to rein in President Barack Obama in the event that he engineers a bad nuclear deal with Iran. In short, the Senate will almost certainly be more willing to stop a bad deal. The bad news is that it may be too late. As far as the deal itself, it is not considered a treaty and therefore not subject to Congressional approval. However, the sanctions bill passed by Congress allows the President to suspend (not permanently cancel) sanctions. A bill co-sponsored by Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) that would impose stronger sanctions on Iran, if the Islamic Republic would either "violate the interim agreement or walk away from the negotiations," was scuttled by the White House in January. Although there was bi-partisan support in the Senate for the bill, Obama prevailed on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to keep the bill from coming to a vote. Obama viewed the bill as a violation of the P5+1's commitment  in last year's Joint Plan of Actions (JPA) (.pdf) to "refrain from imposing new nuclear-related sanctions." Since the Kirk-Menendez bill would only come into effect if Iran violated its commitments, Obama's concern seems baseless. With Reid no longer Majority Leader, the Kirk-Menendez bill should at least come to a vote, as incoming Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in January, “We’re going to continue to press the majority leader to allow a vote on an issue that obviously enjoys the support of a very large bipartisan majority here in the Senate.”

Posted by David Gerstman on October 31, 2014 6 Comments
Elder of Ziyon picked up on a recent bit of hypocrisy when Egypt began destroying hundreds of homes along the Sinai's border with Gaza. In So where are the Rachel Corries for Egypt?  Elder writes:
800 homes demolished in the next few days? Israel has never demolished so many in so little time. Yet over the years there have been numerous NGOs and reports about Israel's home demolitions - and no one cares about Egypt's. There are no groups popping up where young idealistic moronic college students volunteer to act as human shields to protect these homes. Indeed, no one cares about Egypt's demolishing homes for security purposes.
Rachel Corrie was a college student who didn't heed the IDF's warning to get out of the way during the demolition of a house in Gaza that housed a smuggling tunnel; Corrie was killed during the demolition. Elder is right in saying that there has been precious little protest of Egypt's actions. (Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch has been exception. In the case of Egypt, as with Israel, he sides with Hamas.) But what's frustrating is not just in the vastly different reactions to demolitions carried out by Israel as opposed to those carried out by Egypt, but also the contrast in how the world treats Israeli construction plans. This week the topic of Israel building in its capital, Jerusalem, has gotten the world worked up. From the New York Times (emphasis mine):
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Monday that Israel would fast-track planning for 1,060 new apartments in populous Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, a move that appears calibrated to appeal to the maximum number of Israelis while causing the minimum damage to Israel internationally, according to Israeli analysts. But as is often the case, Mr. Netanyahu’s decision prompted swift international condemnation at a time when Israel’s relations with Washington are already strained and risked further igniting Palestinian anger and tensions in Jerusalem. It was also unlikely to satisfy the right-wing political rivals it was intended to appease, the analysts said.
Though there was "Palestinian anger" there's no immediate consequence to this action. No one lost property. No one was displaced.

Posted by David Gerstman on October 29, 2014 11 Comments
Yesterday Prof Jacobson rightly assessed Jeffrey Goldberg's The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here as describing a crisis "in Obama-Israel relations." Although the White House has offered a disavowal of the profane insult made by one of Goldberg's sources, the full substance of his remarks needs to be rebutted. The offending official explained his boorish insult of Netanyahu :
“The good thing about Netanyahu is that he’s scared to launch wars,” the official said, expanding the definition of what a chickenshit Israeli prime minister looks like. “The bad thing about him is that he won’t do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states. The only thing he’s interested in is protecting himself from political defeat. He’s not [Yitzhak] Rabin, he’s not [Ariel] Sharon, he’s certainly no [Menachem] Begin. He’s got no guts.”
This is utterly false. Bret Stephens pointed out (Google link, emphasis mine):
The real problem for the administration is that the Israelis—along with all the other disappointed allies—are learning how little it pays to be on Barack Obama’s good side. Since coming to office in 2009, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed, against his own inclination and over the objections of his political base, to (1) recognize a Palestinian state; (2) enforce an unprecedented 10-month settlement freeze; (3) release scores of Palestinian prisoners held on murder charges; (4) embark on an ill-starred effort to reach a final peace deal with the Palestinians; (5) refrain from taking overt military steps against Iran; and (6) agree to every possible cease-fire during the summer’s war with Hamas. In exchange, Mr. Kerry publicly blamed Israel for the failure of the peace effort, the White House held up the delivery of munitions at the height of the Gaza war, and Mr. Obama is hellbent on striking whatever deal the Iranians can plausibly offer him.

Posted by David Gerstman on October 22, 2014 2 Comments
Earlier today, a Palestinian drove his car off the road into a group of people who had just gotten off Jerusalem's light rail at the Ammunition Hill stop, killing a three month old baby and injuring seven others. The Times of Israel reports:
“A private car which arrived from the direction of the French Hill junction hit a number of pedestrians who were on the pavement and injured nine of them,” police spokeswoman Luba Samri said in a statement. “Initial indications suggest this is a hit-and-run terror attack,” Samri said. The baby died at the nearby Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus a few hours after the incident. A spokesperson for Israeli rescue service Magen David Adom said a 60-year-old woman and seven other people, including the baby’s father, were also lightly and moderately wounded in the attack. ...
The suspect , Abdelrahman al-Shaludi, previously served time in jail and has been identified by Israeli government spokesman Ofir Gendelman as a member of Hamas. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for partnering with Hamas and inciting violence.

Posted by David Gerstman on October 15, 2014 6 Comments
Few publications were more enthusiastic about last year's election of "moderate" Hassan Rouhani as president of Iran than The New York Times. Perhaps some of that enthusiasm stemmed from the possibility of engaging in commercial enterprises with the regime in Tehran. Ira Stoll editor of SmarterTimes noted the other day that The New York Times is promoting a tour of Iran accompanied by one of its journalists, Elaine Sciolino. After noting some of the peculiarities of the deal, Stoll writes:
There's no mention at all in the Times promotional language about the tour of Iran's status as a state supporter of terrorism, of its pursuit of nuclear weapons, or of its human rights abuses. For information about those abuses, anyone considering plunking down nearly $7,000 for the pleasure of accompanying a Times journalist on a "relaxing evening and dinner" after antique shopping in Iran may want to consider, first, browsing the State Department's latest human rights report on Iran. It reports that under Iranian law, "a woman who appears in public without an appropriate headscarf (hijab) may be sentenced to lashings and fined." It also says that "The law criminalizes consensual same-sex sexual activity, which may be punishable by death or flogging."

Posted by David Gerstman on October 08, 2014 21 Comments
The Houthis, Iranian backed rebels have taken control of Yemen's capital, Sanaa. The Washington Post reports:
The capital of Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest and perhaps most chronically unstable nation, has new masters. Shiite rebels man checkpoints and roam the streets in pickups mounted with anti­aircraft guns. The fighters control almost all state buildings, from the airport and the central bank to the Defense Ministry. Only a few police officers and soldiers are left on the streets. Rebel fighters have plastered the city with fliers proclaiming their slogan — “Death to America, death to Israel, a curse on the Jews and victory to Islam” — a variation of a popular Iranian slogan often chanted by Shiite militants in Iraq and supporters of Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
The comparison to Hezbollah is apt as Reuters is reporting that the Houthi are blocking the appointment of Yemen's president.
Abdel-Malek al-Ejri said Hadi had suggested five names at a meeting of his advisors, who represent various political parties in Yemen. When the aides failed to agree on a candidate Hadi suggested his presidential office director, Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak, as a compromise. "But we did not agree, and the matter is still under consultation," Ejri told Reuters.
Similarly, Hezbollah has kept Lebanon's politics unsettled preventing the appointment of a President. So what's Iran's interest in Yemen? It was spelled out by Michael Segall of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs two and a half years ago. A couple of Segall's observations are sobering:

Posted by David Gerstman on September 23, 2014 2 Comments
Yesterday a jury in a federal court in New  York found the Arab Bank - the largest lender in Jordan - liable for "knowingly supporting terrorism efforts connected to two dozen attacks in the Middle East." The New York Times reports:
Arab Bank, a major Middle Eastern bank with $46 billion in assets, was accused of knowingly supporting specific terrorist acts in and around Israel during the second Palestinian uprising of the early 2000s. The verdict is expected to have a strong impact on similar legal efforts to hold financial institutions responsible for wrongdoing by their clients, even if the institutions followed banking rules, and could be seen as a deterrent for banks that conduct business in violent areas. The plaintiffs in this case, about 300 victims of 24 terrorist attacks, said the acts had been carried out by Hamas, and accused Arab Bank of supporting the organization by handling transfers and payments for Hamas members.
The Times quotes Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies on the significance of the verdict.
“What this has done is it’s made the effects of American law felt in far-off places, and that is significant,” said Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former terrorism finance analyst for the Treasury Department. “I don’t think any country, any bank, would want to be cut off from the U.S. financial sector, and they’re going to start thinking very carefully about whether they accept financial transactions” even from people or groups who are not on designated terrorist lists.
The damages were not determined and will be decided at a future  trial.

Posted by David Gerstman on September 19, 2014 3 Comments
The New York Times earlier this month published an expose of how foreign money influenced think tanks. One of the subjects of the article was the Brookings Institution, its vice president Indyk and $14.8 million grant that the government of Qatar had given Brookings. A former scholar at Brookings cautioned that because of Qatar's influence any report coming out of the institution is likely not to be the "full story." The New York Times didn't seem much concerned with the implication of its reporting but some people did notice. In Tablet this week Lee Smith pounced on the Times for not looking into the implications of what it reported.
Or maybe the editors decided that it was all on the level, and the money influenced neither Indyk’s government work on the peace process nor Brookings’ analysis of the Middle East. Or maybe journalists just don’t think it’s worth making a big fuss out of obvious conflicts of interest that may affect American foreign policy. Maybe Qatar’s $14.8 million doesn’t affect Brookings’ research projects or what the think tank’s scholars tell the media, including the New York Times, about subjects like Qatar, Hamas, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other related areas in which Qatar has key interests at stake. Maybe the think tank’s vaunted objectivity, and Indyk’s personal integrity and his pride in his career as a public servant, trump the large piles of vulgar Qatari natural gas money that keep the lights on and furnish the offices of Brookings scholars and pay their cell-phone bills and foreign travel.
Smith also observed that the Qatar connection made Indyk poorly suited as an interlocutor for both the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Posted by David Gerstman on September 16, 2014 12 Comments
The United Nations announced yesterday that it was withdrawing all of its United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) peacekeepers out of Syria due to "[t]he situation in UNDOF on the Syrian side and the area of separation has deteriorated severely over the last several days."
Armed groups have made advances in the area of UNDOF positions, posing a direct threat to the safety and security of the UN Peacekeepers along the “Bravo” line and in Camp Faouar. All the UN personnel in these positions have thus been relocated to the “Alpha” side. UNDOF continues to use all available assets to carry out its mandated tasks in this exceptionally challenging environment.
The "Alpha side" is Israel. https://twitter.com/LTCPeterLerner/status/511583877295403008
Accessibility by WAH