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No one who has visited Jerusalem over the past few years will be surprised by the preponderance of red Turkish flags with their crescent and star, fluttering over the city’s eastern Palestinian neighborhoods. These flags are just one visible manifestation of a major effort by the Turkish government to establish a presence in the Israeli capital. Investigative reports in the press, conducted over the last few years, have revealed the scope of Turkish activity in Jerusalem, which includes the renovation of homes, restoration of mosques and efforts to expose the residents of East Jerusalem to Turkish culture, including cooking workshops and Turkish-language classes. These efforts also include increasing involvement in the affairs of Al-Aqsa Mosque, as described by Ben Caspit in July 2018.

Turks have renovated Mamluk buildings, which they then pass off as Ottoman. “Apart from the city walls, built by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, there aren’t many Ottoman sites in Jerusalem. In contrast, the Mamluks invested quite a bit on construction in Jerusalem, and that’s good enough for Erdogan,” he told Al-Monitor. “It demonstrates his desire to flood Jerusalem with ties to the Ottoman Empire.”

Israel intends to revoke the head of TIKA’s diplomatic status in Jerusalem, effectively making his presence in Israel illegal. “The era of the Ottoman Empire is over. Turkey has no reason to be in Jerusalem,” said the Foreign Ministry in an especially bellicose statement. “[Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan’s declarations that Jerusalem belongs to all Muslims are absolutely baseless and ridiculous. Israel maintains sovereignty in Jerusalem, while ensuring freedom of worship for all religions. We will not allow anyone to interrupt this sovereignty.”

The seventh tripartite summit between Egypt, Cyprus and Greece was held Oct. 8 at Ittihadiya Palace in Cairo. The summit was chaired by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and involved Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

a joint declaration that the three presidents underlined the importance of making additional efforts to boost security and stability in the Eastern Mediterranean region, and strongly denounce any Turkish attempt to undermine the Syrian territorial integrity. They also expressed willingness to promote cooperation in the fields of natural gas drilling and transportation, and stressed the need for stronger international efforts in combating terrorism and extremism. The declaration stated that the three presidents emphasized that an effective international role to break the deadlock in the talks over the Grand Renaissance Dam is a necessity.

attributed the importance of the summit’s timing “to the need that each country supports the other in the decisive issues facing it.”

Egypt, an ally of China, has backed a Belarus text that praises Beijing for “remarkable achievements in the field of human rights” despite increasing condemnation for its treatment of the Uyghurs in the northwest region of Xinjiang where thousands are being held in internment camps.

On Tuesday, 23 nations backed a British statement condemning Beijing’s human rights record, but it was countered by 54 other countries including Pakistan, Russia, Bolivia, Serbia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In August a letter outlining the support of 37 mainly Muslim majority countries for China’s crackdown on Uyghurs as a necessary counter-terror measure ignited outrage.

For the Shiite communities in Iraq and Lebanon, Tehran and its proxies have failed to translate military and political victories into a socioeconomic vision; simply put, Iran’s resistance narrative did not put food on the table.

Today, Iran seems to be winning the long game. Its proxy in Lebanon prevailed in last year’s parliamentary elections. In Syria, Iran managed to save its ally, President Bashar al-Assad. In the past several years, Iran has also gained a lot more power in Baghdad through its proxies, including the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), the Shiite militias created to fight the Islamic State.

Hezbollah’s costly involvement in the Syrian war and pressure from U.S. sanctions on Iran have forced the party to cut salaries and services, widening the gap between the rich and the poor within its own community. Meanwhile, the party also drafted mostly Shiites from poor neighborhoods to go fight in Syria, while its officials benefited from the war riches, causing much resentment.

The majority of Nile Basin countries want to sell water to Egypt, while Ethiopia wants to do the same with the electricity that will be generated from its Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), said Egypt’s former water resources and irrigation minister Mohamed Nasreddin Allam in an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly

believes that the GERD will certainly decrease Egypt’s share of the Nile River, which is the lion’s share among the Nile Basin countries by virtue of the 1959 Agreement on the use of the river, though he stressed that Egypt has other options

“What we [Egypt] need to do is not to buy the electricity that will be generated by the GERD, and the dam will then become useless,” he suggested

In Syria, these women also fought for equality as much as they fought to end the Islamic State. Women’s rights sat at the center of the ideas they had worked to bring to the area, not at all because of American influence, but because of their own ideology inspired by Abdullah Ocalan, Murray Bookchin, and the ideas of near-utopian grassroots, participatory democracy with women’s equality at its center. While critics often saw these ideas as unique to this group of Kurds, the many young women I met from Arab and Christian communities across the region very much shared at least the women’s piece — the idea that they merited a say in their own future. For the members of the Women’s Protection Units that Nowruz led, beating ISIS meant beating the ideology that said women meant nothing and mattered even less.

More than 15 women have died since Turkey’s offensive against the Kurds began two weeks ago. Turkish-backed forces released a video showing their capture of one of the YPJ fighters.  Another video shows Turkish-backed forces calling a dead YPJ fighter a “whore.”

The end of Baghdadi offered the only bright spot she and her forces have experienced since Turkey launched its attack.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has once again stunned Europe, this time by threatening to send captured Islamic State (IS) suspects there

Erdogan's most recent threats came as he was responding to the European Union warning of sanctions against Turkey’s drilling operations in the eastern Mediterranean.

Ankara is angry that the Cyprus government is pursuing oil and natural gas exploration without ensuring the rights of the Turkish side, and that the EU is backing Cyprus. Ankara has found itself isolated. Greece, which had made exploration deals with Italy's ENI, France's Total and America's Noble and ExxonMobil, secured the full support of the United States and the EU last year. Early this year, the Republic of Cyprus, Greece, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Palestine and Egypt established the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum in Cairo.

The United Nations Yemen envoy Martin Griffiths has told the UN Security Council that the number of air attacks by the Saudi-led coalition battling the Houthi rebels has dropped by nearly 80 percent in the last two weeks.

"In recent weeks, there have been entire 48-hour periods without air strikes for the first time since the conflict began," Griffiths said on Friday. "We call this de-escalation, a reduction in the tempo of the war, and perhaps a move towards an overall ceasefire in Yemen."

De-escalation of hostilities is a major aspect of informal talks that have been going on between Saudi Arabia and Houthi officials since September for a possible ceasefire in Yemen.

Since the opening of the Suez Canal, the renowned waterway connecting the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, its environmental impact has been a matter of concern, with the arrival of nonindigenous species from other regions. Since the official inauguration 150 years ago, the number of species that have arrived through the canal — known as Lessepsian or Erythrean species — is estimated to exceed 400, according to different studies. This is a substantial migration that some observers warn is causing the most significant biogeographic change currently underway worldwide.

“This has caused a substantial change in the traffic [food] webs of the Eastern Mediterranean, and such kind of life chain change has not been observed anywhere else in the world.”

Even if the introduction of Erythrean species started as soon as the canal opened, only a few established in the Mediterranean back then. It has only been in the last decades that the process has skyrocketed, and the number of alien species in the Mediterranean — not only Lessepsian — more than doubled between 1970 and 2015, bringing a new sense of urgency.

Two judgments handed down just days apart—one by the Israeli Supreme Court and the other by the European Court of Justice—highlight a growing jurisprudential divide between Israeli and international courts on the status of Israeli settlements in the West Bank

On Nov. 12, the European Court of Justice ruled that Israeli food products from the West Bank and Golan Heights must be explicitly labeled as coming from “Israeli settlements,” rather than from Israel itself. The ruling, which cited European Union regulations designed to allow consumers to make informed choices about their food purchases, held that since international humanitarian law limits Israeli jurisdiction in these territories to that of an “occupying power,” it would be misleading to represent such products as being “from Israel.”

stakes of the long-anticipated Israeli Supreme Court judgment in Human Rights Watch v. Interior Minister, handed down just a week earlier. In its judgment, the court upheld a government decision to expel Human Rights Watch’s (HRW’s) Israel and Palestine director, Omar Shakir, from the country, based on a law barring entry by foreigners who promote boycotts of Israel or its West Bank settlements. The case marked the first time the court was called upon to rule on the law’s application to boycott-related activities directed primarily at the settlements, rather than at Israel itself.

The authoritarian normalization that continues to mark relations between Turkey’s political and military echelons since the 2016 failed coup is now affecting the policymaking process in the country's defense industry. The industry is the new favorite of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as the bruising financial crisis heavily hit his former favorite sector, construction.

Four major reasons are behind Erdogan's piqued interest in the defense industry: First, Erdogan's popular support drastically increased after Turkey’s Oct. 9 incursion into Syria, known as Operation Peace Spring. Second, the defense industry is a good tool for producing success stories to divert public attention at a time of economic crisis. Third, success in the defense realm offers political gains in foreign policy. And finally, it creates profitable export opportunities to several countries including Qatar, Pakistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and some African nations.

In December 2017, Erdogan issued a decree placing TSKGV under his auspices. Since then, however, Erdogan hasn’t quite managed to establish full control over the institution, which mainly remains under the influence of the retired generals.

If the Trump administration endorses annexation, a position in line with recognizing the legality of settlements, then the framework of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict changes and the issues of sovereignty and political rights will become front and center.

Without question, the new U.S. stance on settlements undermines international law, which is clear on the illegality of an occupying power transferring its population into occupied territory. The applicability of this tenet of the Fourth Geneva Convention to Israel-Palestine has been upheld by near-universal international consensus since the occupation began in 1967, including by the U.N. Security Council and the International Court of Justice.

the opinion of a single state — even the most powerful one — does not alter the law itself. As Rupert Colville, the spokesman for the U.N. Commissioner on Human Rights, responded to the Trump administration announcement, “a change in the policy of one state does not modify existing international law nor its interpretation by the International Court of Justice and Security Council.” If the rest of the world continues to adhere to the principle that the settlements are illegal, the decision will likely do more to undermine U.S. standing and leadership than the Geneva Convention or the law itself.

a poster in a Moroccan bus station. Apparently hung by the major transport company CTM, it announced it would be "strictly forbidden to sell CTM tickets to Africans" traveling to cities near Europe if they couldn't produce a valid Moroccan residency permit. It was clear “African” referred to black sub-Saharans and not Moroccans.

Though the poster’s words came as a shock to most, the policy behind them has been in practice for several years, migrants say. And rather than the intended effect of curbing migration, such policies have only cultivated illegal trafficking networks. 

Tens of thousands of sub-Saharan migrants have passed through Morocco to Europe in recent decades. An estimated 700,000 currently reside in the kingdom, many without legal permission to do so.

A U.S. Navy warship seized advanced missile parts believed to be linked to Iran from a boat it had stopped in the Arabian Sea, U.S. officials said on Wednesday, as Trump's administration pressures Tehran to curb its activities in the region.

on Nov. 25 a U.S. warship found "advanced missile components" on a stateless vessel and an initial investigation indicated the parts were of Iranian origin.

The crew on the small boat have been transferred to the Yemeni Coast Guard and the missile parts are in the possession of the United States

In December 2009, when President Barack Obama ordered attacks on two suspected terrorist camps in Yemen, at least one Tomahawk missile fired from a warship accompanying the U.S.S. Nimitz dumped BLU-97 bomblets onto the village of al-Ma’jalah. The Navy made an almost comical play for plausible deniability of America’s role. The ships steamed near shore so their cruise missiles would have sufficient fuel to fly beyond the target, turn back in the direction of the sea, release their payload onto al-Ma’jalah and then continue over the beach and fall into blue water, hiding evidence on the ocean floor.The attack reportedly killed 55 people, including 14 people suspected of being Qaeda members, 14 women and 21 children. The empty cruise missiles fell into the sea. But at least one dud was left behind at the strike scene. Before long, photos of Tomahawk missile parts appeared in news reports from Yemen, along with one clearly showing an unexploded BLU-97 — distinctive bright yellow and made in the United States. In keeping with United States policy of concealing American involvement in the Yemen conflict, the government of Yemen lied about the strike, claiming the village was attacked by Yemeni forces. Along with the accidental civilian casualties, the bungled attack had another unintended effect: Diplomatic cables exposed by WikiLeaks show that President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen and Gen. David Petraeus decided to forgo future cruise missile attacks in favor of airstrikes — evidently a concession to BLU-97 unreliability and public mood.

Under the new policy, military commanders can now use existing cluster munitions until “sufficient quantities” of “enhanced and more reliable” replacements are developed and fielded. Though the Army has recently purchased cluster munitions that claim a dud rate of less than 1 percent, the service is buying them in such small quantities that they will come nowhere close to replacing existing stockpiles on a one-for-one basis.

The vast majority of cluster weapons the United States currently holds are the same as those that killed and injured dozens of troops in Desert Storm.

Reviewing Biden’s record on Iraq is like rewinding footage of a car crash to identify the fateful decisions that arrayed people at the bloody intersection. He was not just another Democratic hawk navigating the trauma of 9/11 in a misguided way. He didn’t merely call his vote for a disastrous war part of “a march to peace and security.” Biden got the Iraq war wrong before and throughout invasion, occupation, and withdrawal. Convenient as it is to blame Bush—who, to be clear, bears primary and eternal responsibility for the disaster—Biden embraced the Iraq war for what he portrayed as the result of his foreign policy principles and persisted, most often in error, for the same reasons. 

“I think the vast majority of the foreign policy community thinks [my record has] been very good.” That will be important context should Biden become president. He’s the favorite of many in Democratic foreign policy circles who believe in resetting the American geopolitical position to what it was the day before Trump was elected, rather than considering it critical context for why Trump was elected. 

National Democrats embraced the war on terrorism with enthusiasm and, with few exceptions, were disinclined to challenge Bush on foreign policy even as that foreign policy became more militant and extreme

Eyal Tsir Cohen is a visiting fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings. Tsir is currently on leave from the Israeli prime minister’s office, where he has served for the last 30 years in various senior positions. His career has focused on security and intelligence issues, and shaping policies and strategies on global terrorism.

While Israel has reportedly carried out thousands of strikes in Syria and neighboring Iraq in recent years, the frequency, intensity, and toll of these recent attacks are unprecedented.

Israel has come to see that Iran is not forsaking its project in Syria, and further may be pursuing more sophisticated means of threatening Israel’s northern border. This week’s report that Iran is moving missiles into Iraq only reinforces this perception

The White House successfully pushed Congress to remove language in the annual defense bill that would have imposed concrete penalties on Saudi Arabia for the war in Yemen and the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

“I have been dismayed by how much defense Congress has given the White House to help draft the NDAA,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who spearheaded the dead Yemen amendment. “It’s another example of Congress outsourcing our own power, our own responsibilities, to the executive branch. This has largely proven to be negotiations with the White House, and we capitulated to every White House and Pentagon demand.” 

Khanna’s amendment would have ended US logistical and intelligence support for the Saudi-led coalition as well as blocked spare-part transfers and maintenance for Saudi aircraft. The final bill does include language banning the mid-air refueling of Saudi war planes, but the Trump administration already ended that last year.

The Kurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) peshmerga forces are lacking a unified command. Rather, the peshmerga, which played a key role in defeating the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq alongside the US-led global coalition, is receiving commands from the Kurdish ruling parties: the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). This raises concerns that the peshmerga will be exploited in political disputes.

The two main Kurdish ruling parties, the KDP and the PUK, have their own peshmerga forces. The KDP has 80 units, and the PUK has 70 units. Both parties jointly have nearly 240,000 peshmerga troops. The parties engaged in an internal armed conflict against each other from 1994 to 1998. Moreover, they frequently use the peshmerga to attack rival political parties and forcefully suppress civilian protests.

In the town of Bardarash, 70 kilometers (43 miles) north of Erbil, a verbal quarrel between peshmerga officers led to the killing of a major and a first lieutenant, according to a senior peshmerga commander. The commander told Al-Monitor that the quarrel was related to who should hold military posts within the newly unified brigade.

For four years, Netanyahu has equated Jews with the Israeli government, while Trump has made common cause with white nationalists. I wish more Israelis understood why this was so terrifying.

Growing up as a Jewish Israeli-American, antisemitism carried two connotations for me. One was a relic of the past: the stories my grandparents told about the events leading up to the Holocaust back in the old country. The second was the deliberate strategy by hasbara activists to label every criticism of Israeli policy as antisemitism — a toxic smear that I understood as manipulation.

My first experience of antisemitism was by proxy — antisemitism as metaphor. I was working as a human rights advocate in Israel when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cronies launched an attack on left-wing NGOs and human rights defenders that used the tactics, imagery, and language from classic European antisemitism, the kind that killed my ancestors.