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in title, tags, annotations or urlCompassion of the many: Indifference of the few - Al Jazeera English - 1 views
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While the welcome given to refugees by so many ordinary Greek people has been extraordinary, paradoxically the further one gets from the beaches of Lesbos and Chios, the more attitudes towards refugees calcify. Indeed, among those furthest removed from the crisis - in the parliaments of Europe - compassionate words are seldom matched by action.
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While the Greek authorities and the European Union have repeatedly insisted that all Syrian refugees arriving in Greece were having their asylum claims properly assessed, the evidence in this case strongly suggests otherwise. Not only were Haji and his family denied the right to apply for asylum, but no risk assessment was undertaken on the danger they would face if returned to Turkey. They were also denied access to legal advice during the critical hours of their deportation.
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a further 62,000 refugees and migrants are stranded in Greece, living in a state of constant fear and uncertainty. This is the result of the EU-Turkey migration deal and the failure of EUropean leaders to relocate the promised numbers of refugees from Greece.
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U.S. Boosts Trade to Iran, Despite Sanctions - The Source - WSJ - 1 views
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European companies realize they suffer more from recent Iran restrictions than their U.S. counterparts–and that such advantage may stem in part from better corporate access to decision-makers in Washington than in Brussels.
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U.S. companies benefit from well established channels in Washington to plead for sanctions exemptions, while their European peers, “don’t have the same mechanism to lobby the Eu bureaucracy.”
Syria Comment » Archives » "Bush White House Wanted to Destroy the Syrian State by Force and With Urgency," Tony Blair - 0 views
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Turkish Populism Goes to the Polls | Foreign Affairs - 0 views
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Amid the political turmoil sweeping the Middle East, there are signs that the populist and anti-Western strand in Turkey's foreign policy may have run its course
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Building on the work of its predecessors, the AKP government replaced a foreign policy based on security with one focused on engagement, soft power, and trade, in the process diffusing tensions with neighboring countries such as Iran, Iraq, and Syria (known as the "zero problems" policy).
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Never before in Turkey's modern history has foreign policy been so directly wedded to domestic politics: The architects of Turkey's foreign policy used to answer to the generals; these days, policymakers answer to the public. And never before has a Turkish government staked so much of its reputation on its international accomplishments, real or hypothetical.
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Syria: Has it won? | The Economist - 0 views
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Under its surprisingly durable leader, Syria has stubbornly nudged its way back into the heart of regional diplomacy. It can no longer be ignored
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Mr Assad is increasingly viewed as an essential part of the region’s diplomatic jigsaw. He is fast coming back into the game. Even America would like to embrace him.
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A flurry of foreign dignitaries has recently courted Mr Assad, including the Saudi king, the French and Croatian presidents, the prime ministers of Turkey, Jordan, Iraq and Spain, and a stream of ministers and MPs, plus a string of prominent Americans. Mr Jumblatt himself is expected in Damascus soon, as is another Lebanese leader with a personal animus, Saad Hariri, now filling his slain father’s shoes as Lebanon’s prime minister.
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Council conclusions on Yemen - Consilium - 2 views
Syria Comment » Archives » Washington Reaffirms Sanctions on Syria as Gift to Israel - 1 views
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The decision by European governments to purchase Airbus parts from the US may have seemed like good business and political practice in the past. It has Eu politicians gnashing their teeth today. Sarkozy must be considering changing Airbus’ purchasing percentages. Little wonder that today’s headline about Sarkozy is: Sarkozy cool on relationship with Obama.
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Washington foreign policy mavens want Israel safe at any price. No Arab resistance to Israel is acceptable even as the US refuses to punish the Jewish State for continuing to push Palestinians off what land remains to them. Even more important to Damascus is Washington’s refusal to challenge Prime Minister Netanyahu’s assertion that Israel will not return the Golan Heights to Syria even for peace and security guarantees, which President Assad has made clear he is willing to provide. The only conclusion he can make is that resistance alone will win back the Golan. Israel is counting on unwavering US support and its military superiority to convince the Syrians to abandon their claims.
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such a policy makes the US enemies it doesn’t need.
Club Med: Israel, Egypt, and Others Form New Natural Gas Group - Foreign Policy - 0 views
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a forum joining Israel, Egypt, Cyprus, and other neighbors to develop their new natural gas discoveries. The Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum, announced Monday in Cairo, formalizes growing energy ties among recent rivals and could spur much-needed development of energy infrastructure required to tap the region’s potential as a source of energy for Europe and beyond. The forum in particular cements the growing commercial links between Israel and Egypt; Israel expects to start shipping natural gas to Egypt in the next few months as part of a landmark, $15 billion deal between the two countries.
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a few notable absences, including Syria and Lebanon—both of which are trying to develop potential offshore gas fields—and especially Turkey
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The new body will promote “discussions among countries that already have cooperation with each other,” said Brenda Shaffer, an energy expert at Georgetown University. “Hopefully, in the next round of the forum, Turkey will be involved, and that would make it much more significant and not just include the happy campers.”
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Spurned by Trump, Europeans ponder how to meet Iran ultimatum - 0 views
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With Trump warning of a last chance for “the worst deal ever negotiated”, Britain, France and Germany have begun talks on a plan to satisfy him by addressing Iran’s ballistic missile tests and its regional influence while preserving the 2015 accord that curbed Iran’s nuclear ambitions for at least a decade. It is hard to say what might mollify the Trump administration, which is split between those who would like to tear up the agreement and those who wish to preserve it and which has said inconsistent things about its demands to keep the accord, U.S. and European officials said. Under U.S. law, Trump must decide again whether to renew the U.S. sanctions relief every 120 days, giving Congress, as well as U.S. and European diplomats, until mid-May to see if there is a way to finesse the issue. But the Brussels meeting has left European powers wary that whatever they agree, it may not be enough.
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A collapse of the nuclear deal could see a breakdown in the relations between the United States and Europe that have underpinned the West’s security since World War Two, European diplomats and the senior U.S. official said, and could confirm Europe’s fears that it can no longer count on U.S. leadership
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Washington wants U.N. nuclear inspectors to be able to visit military sites as part of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s verification of the nuclear deal. The IAEA says it does not distinguish between military and non-military sites and has repeatedly said Iran is honoring its commitments under the deal.
Yemen: War Profiteers | Yemen | Al Jazeera - 0 views
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According to the United Nations, Yemen today is the world's worst humanitarian crisis. In 2018, the UN appointed a panel of experts to examine the coalition blockade on Yemen and the impact of the thousands of airstrikes launched against civilians there. It concluded that these practices could qualify as war crimes. It pointed not only at Saudi Arabia and the UAE, but also at the parties supplying the coalition with weapons, based on a multilateral treaty regulating arms sales that has been in force since 2014. Saudi Arabia buys its weapons from the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as from a number of European arms manufacturers, led by French and German companies.
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The European parliament has called for a suspension of arms sales to Saudi. Although five Eu member states have stopped selling war weapons to the kingdom, its five biggest suppliers, led by the UK, have not.
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In this film, we reveal details of the shadowy world of the so-called legal arms trade, the double-discourse of our democracies, and the shortcomings of European governments. And we pose a fundamental question: by pursuing trade with Saudi Arabia, are European countries complicit in war crimes?
Turkey launches Operation Spring Shield against Syrian forces - 0 views
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Ankara said today that it had launched Operation Spring Shield against the Syrian Arab Army on a day that saw Turkey down two Russian-made Syrian air force jets, and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on March 5 over the unfolding Idlib crisis.
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Turkey said it had destroyed several air defense systems, more than 100 tanks and killed 2,212 members of the Syrian forces, including three top generals in drone strikes since Feb 27
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The dramatic escalation pitting NATO member Turkey against the far weaker Syrian Arab army followed Feb. 27 airstrikes that killed at least 36 Turkish soldiers in Idlib, sending shock waves throughout Turkey.
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No going back: How America and the Middle East can turn the page to a productive future - 0 views
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the Arab world — with few exceptions — either sees citizens rising up in protest, citizens who are suffering from government repression, or citizens living through civil war. Although each country is unique, the core complaints across them are some combination of poverty, corruption, and an absence of freedom.
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Across the region, ordinary citizens are rising up against an elite class that is accumulating enormous wealth through enormous corruption and for basic rights. This is a region where in most countries, the top 1% generally earns more than the bottom 50%. That might have been tolerated in a pre-social media world, but now that ordinary citizens can see the extreme wealth of the elite, and can use social media to organize, extreme income inequality just isn’t stable any longer.
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Even America’s closest allies like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — which might seem stable, and where military spending is among the highest on earth per capita — have to resort to such significant repression of freedom of expression that Freedom House ranks them as some of the worst in the world. In Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the bottom half earn one of lowest proportions of income at the world, at 8% and 9% respectively.
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The Deportation of Omar Shakir: The Israeli Supreme Court and the BDS Movement - Lawfare - 0 views
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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
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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.”
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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.
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What is at stake in the eastern Mediterranean crisis? | Financial Times - 0 views
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Competition over gas discoveries in the eastern Mediterranean has combined with bitter regional rivalries to fuel dangerous tensions between Turkey and its neighbours in recent months. Many fear this could lead to direct military confrontation between Turkey and Greece, as the two Nato members and their allies square up over control of the seas.
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the Turkish Cypriot self-declared state is not recognised by the international community, which views the government on the Greek Cypriot side as the legitimate authority for the whole island. Cyprus was contentiously admitted to the EU in 2004
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Turkey believes that the government that sits in southern Cyprus should not have the right to auction blocks of its surrounding seabed to international energy companies until Turkish Cypriots can share the benefits. But peace talks have failed multiple times in the past 45 years
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It's Turkey's Libya now | European Council on Foreign Relations - 1 views
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Turkish military support has driven the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) to sweeping victories that have effectively killed off Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar’s hopes of conquering Tripoli, while creating significant fractures within his camp. As Turkey grows more assertive and stamps its authority on Libya, Europeans need to use these shifting dynamics to create a new political reality in Libya – one that might finally have a chance of success, given his dramatically weakened position
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Turkey’s new assertiveness is a direct result of the failure of the Berlin conference held in January. The German initiative was designed to align international actors on a political route out of the morass in Libya, but it did little to deter the United Arab Emirates’ massive mobilisation in support of Haftar. Ankara has now demonstrated a firm intent to remove Haftar from Tripoli and its environs. Turkey’s Libya intervention appears to be following Russia’s Syria playbook – from the legitimising act of a formal invitation that had parliamentary approval (in stark contrast to the covert intervention of all other states involved in the war) to its exploitation of divisions between European countries whenever it felt threatened by them
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Haftar’s forces still launch missile attacks on Tripoli each day and control Libya’s oil.
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