Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

none of this should have happened, given the extensive and hugely expensive air defences that the Saudis have installed to safeguard Abqaiq and other facilities from Iranian and Houthi missiles

US troops left the kingdom in 2004 after the start of the 2003 Iraq war, even if many Americans stayed on in civilian guise. With that withdrawal, one of the biggest US bases, a large part of the Royal Saudi Air Force’s Prince Sultan Air Force Base, was closed down, leaving the Saudis as the sole occupants. That was until July this year when, according to Military.com: Air Force Col. David Jackson, commander of the 621st Contingency Response Wing, told Military.com last week that teams from his wing were sent to Prince Sultan, about 50 miles southeast of the capital of Riyadh, to prepare the airfield for renewed operations.

Iranian cruise missiles have a range of about 700 km, armed drones of 1,200 km, and the nearest Iranian territory to Abqaiq is far less than that

an apparently minor decision taken three months ago that scarcely registered with Western politicians: the return of uniformed US troops to the kingdom

The Iranian success was a disaster for Saudi Arabia and an embarrassment for US, French, German and Swiss arms suppliers. Given that Saudi Arabia has many oil and gas fields and processing plants, not to mention a series of huge desalination plants on which the kingdom depends for half of its drinking water, it is easy to see the extreme concern behind the scenes in Riyadh.

Prince Sultan base now looks highly likely to be the main staging post for around 500 uniformed US military to be deployed to the kingdom to boost its own inadequate air defences. Given the state of tension with Iran it is safe to assume that this initial deployment will be the start of something substantially bigger.

a perfect gift for extreme Islamist movements who can point once again to the weakness of the House of Saud: in their view the Guardian of the Two Holy Cities is anything but

wise to assume that, all along, one of Iran’s aims has been to draw Saudi Arabia and the Pentagon closer and closer together, causing dissent in the kingdom and continuing embarrassment for the royal house

The militias that support the GNA are too quarrelsome and undisciplined to mount a sustained campaign. Misrata, home to some of the most powerful armed groups, supports the GNA but is a separate centre of power

In the east General Haftar stokes fear of a Turkish-backed Islamist threat. But Tripoli is 1,000km away. Many of the east’s 2m or so people, though hungry for more autonomy, grumble about the high cost of the war. The LNA consumes a third of the east’s budget. Some 7,000 of its men have been killed in the past year.

“We do not approve the statement that Field-Marshal Haftar will now single-handedly decide how the Libyan people should live,” said Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister. Russia and others are preoccupied with covid-19 and may be questioning whether access to Libya’s oil is worth all the trouble given lower prices. Still, Russia has sent mercenaries to fight the GNA, and the UAE’s support for General Haftar is increasing.

Erdogan, the president of Turkey, is challenging their influence in the eastern Mediterranean. In November he signed a pact with the GNA’s prime minister, Fayez al-Serraj, committing to defend Tripoli in exchange for gas-exploration rights in Libya’s waters. Since then Turkish arms and intelligence, as well as 4,000 fighters from Turkish-controlled parts of Syria, have shifted the balance on the ground in Libya. From the sky Turkish drones have been striking General Haftar’s long supply lines.

the head of the UN mission in Libya, Ghassan Salame, bowed out in March. “I can no longer continue with this level of stress,” he said. His successor, as yet unnamed, will be the fourth person to hold the job since 2014. Trying to put Libya back together is an exhausting task

“In the middle of the night,” he wrote, “coalition airplanes targeted two houses occupied by innocent civilians. Is this technology? This barbarian attack cost me the lives of my wife, daughter, brother and nephew.”

two direct hits. “O.K., this is my house, and this is Mohannad’s house,” he recalled. “One rocket here, and one rocket there. It was not a mistake.”

in 2003, the United States invaded. One night just a few months afterward, the Americans showed up at the Woods and took over a huge abandoned military barracks across the street from Basim’s property. The next morning, they started cutting down trees. “They said, ‘This is for our security,’ ” Basim recalled. “I said, ‘Your security doesn’t mean destruction of the forest.’ ” Walls of concrete and concertina wire started to appear amid the pine and chinar stands.

When the Americans withdrew in 2011, Basim felt as if almost everyone he knew harbored grievances toward the occupation.

“Radical Islamists grew as a result of this war, and many ideas grew out of this war which we have never seen or heard before,”

During the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, war planners began to focus more seriously on condolence payments, seeing them as a way to improve relations with locals and forestall revenge attacks. Soon, American forces were disbursing thousands of dollars yearly to civilians who suffered losses because of combat operations, for everything from property damage to the death of a family member.

In 2003, an activist from Northern California named Marla Ruzicka showed up in Baghdad determined to overhaul the system. She founded Civic, now known as the Center for Civilians in Conflict, and collected evidence of civilians killed in American military operations. She discovered not only that there were many more than expected but also that the assistance efforts for survivors were remarkably haphazard and arbitrary. Civic championed the cause in Washington and found an ally in Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont. In 2005, Ruzicka was killed by a suicide blast in Baghdad, but her efforts culminated in legislation that established a fund to provide Iraqi victims of American combat operations with nonmonetary assistance — medical care, home reconstruction — that served, in practice, as compensation.

not a single person in Iraq or Syria has received a condolence payment for a civilian death since the war began in 2014. “There really isn’t a process,” a senior Central Command official told us. “It’s not that anyone is against it; it just hasn’t been done, so it’s almost an aspirational requirement.”

While assisting civilian victims is no longer a military priority, some authorities appear to remain concerned about retaliation. About a year after the strike on Basim’s house, his cousin Hussain Al-Rizzo, a systems-engineering professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, received a visit from an F.B.I. agent. The agent, he said, asked if the deaths of his relatives in an American airstrike made him in his “heart of hearts sympathize with the bad guys.” Hussain, who has lived in the United States since 1987, was stunned by the question. He said no.

Because there was no established mechanism for Iraqi victims to meet American officials, his appointment was at the American Citizen Services section. He pressed against the window and showed the consular officer his dossier. One page contained satellite imagery of the Razzo houses, and others contained before-and-after photos of the destruction. Between them were photos of each victim: Mayada sipping tea, Tuqa in the back yard, Najib in a black-and-white self-portrait and a head shot of Mohannad, an engineering professor, his academic credentials filling the rest of the page. The most important issue, Basim had written, was that his family was now “looked at as members of ISIS” by the Iraqi authorities. This threatened to be a problem, especially after the city’s liberation. The consular officer, who spoke to us on the condition of anonymity, was moved. “I have people coming in every day that lie to me, that come with these sob stories,” the officer remembered telling him, “but I believe you.”

when Basim’s case was referred to a military attorney, the attorney replied, “There’s no way to prove that the U.S. was involved.”

we wrote to the coalition ourselves, explaining that we were reporters working on an article about Basim. We provided details about his family and his efforts to reach someone in authority and included a link to the YouTube video the coalition posted immediately after the strike. A public-affairs officer responded, “There is nothing in the historical log for 20 SEP 2015,” the date the coalition had assigned to the strike video. Not long after, the video disappeared from the coalition’s YouTube channel. We responded by providing the GPS coordinates of Basim’s home, his emails to the State Department and an archived link to the YouTube video, which unlike the videos on the Pentagon’s website allow for comments underneath — including those that Basim’s family members left nearly a year before.

Over the coming weeks, one by one, the coalition began removing all the airstrike videos from YouTube.

An alarm blares occasional high-temperature alerts, but the buildings themselves are kept so frigid that aviators sometimes wear extra socks as mittens

Most of the civilian deaths acknowledged by the coalition emerge from this internal reporting process. Often, though, watchdogs or journalists bring allegations to the coalition, or officials learn about potential civilian deaths through social media. The coalition ultimately rejects a vast majority of such external reports. It will try to match the incident to a strike in its logs to determine whether it was indeed its aircraft that struck the location in question (the Iraqi Air Force also carries out strikes). If so, it then scours its drone footage, pilot videos, internal records and, when they believe it is warranted, social media and other open-source information for corroborating evidence. Each month, the coalition releases a report listing those allegations deemed credible, dismissing most of them on the grounds that coalition aircraft did not strike in the vicinity or that the reporter failed to provide sufficiently precise information about the time and place of the episode.

They speak of every one of the acknowledged deaths as tragic but utterly unavoidable. “We’re not happy with it, and we’re never going to be happy with it,” said Thomas, the Central Command spokesman. “But we’re pretty confident we do the best we can to try to limit these things.”

Airwars, a nonprofit based in London that monitors news reports, accounts by nongovernmental organizations, social-media posts and the coalition’s own public statements. Airwars tries to triangulate these sources and grade each allegation from “fair” to “disputed.” As of October, it estimates that up to 3,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in coalition airstrikes — six times as many as the coalition has stated in its public summaries. But Chris Woods, the organization’s director, told us that Airwars itself “may be significantly underreporting deaths in Iraq,” because the local reporting there is weaker than in other countries that Airwars monitors.

the coalition, the institution best placed to investigate civilian death claims, does not itself routinely dispatch investigators on the ground, citing access and security concerns, meaning there has not been such a rigorous ground investigation of this air war — or any American-led air campaign — since Human Rights Watch analyzed the civilian toll of the NATO bombing in Kosovo, a conflict that ended in 1999

we selected three areas in Nineveh Province, traveling to the location of every airstrike that took place during ISIS control in each — 103 sites in all. These areas encompassed the range of ISIS-controlled settlements in size and population makeup: downtown Shura, a small provincial town that was largely abandoned during periods of heavy fighting; downtown Qaiyara, a suburban municipality; and Aden, a densely packed city neighborhood in eastern Mosul. The sample would arguably provide a conservative estimate of the civilian toll: It did not include western Mosul, which may have suffered the highest number of civilian deaths in the entire war. Nor did it include any strikes conducted after December 2016, when a rule change allowed more ground commanders to call in strikes, possibly contributing to a sharp increase in the death toll.

In addition to interviewing hundreds of witnesses, we dug through the debris for bomb fragments, tracked down videos of airstrikes in the area and studied before-and-after satellite imagery. We also obtained and analyzed more than 100 coordinate sets for suspected ISIS sites passed on by intelligence informants. We then mapped each neighborhood door to door, identifying houses where ISIS members were known to have lived and locating ISIS facilities that could be considered legitimate targets. We scoured the wreckage of each strike for materials suggesting an ISIS presence, like weapons, literature and decomposed remains of fighters. We verified every allegation with local administrators, security forces or health officials

During the two years that ISIS ruled downtown Qaiyara, an area of about one square mile, there were 40 airstrikes, 13 of which killed 43 civilians — 19 men, eight women and 16 children, ages 14 or younger. In the same period, according to the Iraqi federal police, ISIS executed 18 civilians in downtown Qaiyara

in about half of the strikes that killed civilians, we could find no discernible ISIS target nearby

By the time the information made its way to the coalition and it decided to act, the mortar had been moved. Such intelligence failures suggest that not all civilian casualties are unavoidable tragedies; some deaths could be prevented if the coalition recognizes its past failures and changes its operating assumptions accordingly. But in the course of our investigation, we found that it seldom did either.

On the evening of April 20, 2015, aircraft bombed the station, causing a tremendous explosion that engulfed the street. Muthana Ahmed Tuaama, a university student, told us his brother rushed into the blaze to rescue the wounded, when a second blast shook the facility. “I found my brother at the end of the street,” he said. “I carried him.” Body parts littered the alleyway. “You see those puddles of water,” he said. “It was just like that, but full of blood.” We determined that at least 18 civilians died in this one attack and that many more were grievously wounded. News of the strike was picked up by local bloggers, national Iraqi outlets and ISIS propaganda channels and was submitted as an allegation to the coalition by Airwars. Months later, the coalition announced the results of its investigation, stating that there was “insufficient evidence to find that civilians were harmed in this strike.” Yet even a cursory internet search offers significant evidence that civilians were harmed: We found disturbingly graphic videos of the strike’s aftermath on YouTube, showing blood-soaked toddlers and children with their legs ripped off.

Human rights organizations have repeatedly found discrepancies between the dates or locations of strikes and those recorded in the logs. In one instance, the coalition deemed an allegation regarding a strike in the Al-Thani neighborhood of Tabqa, Syria, on Dec. 20, 2016, as “not credible,” explaining that the nearest airstrike was more than a kilometer away. After Human Rights Watch dispatched researchers to the ground and discovered evidence to the contrary, the coalition acknowledged the strike as its own

The most common justification the coalition gives when denying civilian casualty allegations is that it has no record of carrying out a strike at the time or area in question. If incomplete accounts like these are standard practice, it calls into question the coalition’s ability to determine whether any strike is its own. Still, even using the most conservative rubric and selecting only those 30 airstrikes the Air Force analysts classified as “probable” coalition airstrikes, we found at least 21 civilians had been killed in six strikes. Expanding to the 65 strikes that fell within 600 meters — for example, the strikes on the home of Inas Hamadi in Qaiyara and the electrical substation in Aden — pushed that figure to at least 54 killed in 15 strikes. No matter which threshold we used, though, the results from our sample were consistent: One of every five airstrikes killed a civilian

“We deeply regret this unintentional loss of life in an attempt to defeat Da’esh,” Scrocca wrote, using another term for ISIS. “We are prepared to offer you a monetary expression of our sympathy and regret for this unfortunate incident.” He invited Basim to come to Erbil to discuss the matter. Basim was the first person to receive such an offer, in Iraq or Syria, during the entire anti-ISIS war.

“This situation of war,” he continued, “big corporations are behind it.” This is where the real power lay, not with individual Americans. He’d come to believe that his family, along with all Iraqis, had been caught in the grinder of grand forces like oil and empire, and that the only refuge lay in something even grander: faith. He had rediscovered his religion. “There was some bond that grew between me and my God. I thanked him for keeping my son alive. I thanked him that my operation was successful. Now I can walk.”

In the effort to expel ISIS from Iraq and Syria, the coalition has conducted more than 27,500 strikes to date, deploying everything from Vietnam-era B-52 bombers to modern Predator drones. That overwhelming air power has made it possible for local ground troops to overcome heavy resistance and retake cities throughout the region. “U.S. and coalition forces work very hard to be precise in airstrikes,” Maj. Shane Huff, a spokesman for the Central Command, told us, and as a result “are conducting one of the most precise air campaigns in military history.”

The coalition usually announces an airstrike within a few days of its completion. It also publishes a monthly report assessing allegations of civilian casualties. Those it deems credible are generally explained as unavoidable accidents — a civilian vehicle drives into the target area moments after a bomb is dropped, for example. The coalition reports that since August 2014, it has killed tens of thousands of ISIS fighters and, according to our tally of its monthly summaries, 466 civilians in Iraq.

Our own reporting, conducted over 18 months, shows that the air war has been significantly less precise than the coalition claims. Between April 2016 and June 2017, we visited the sites of nearly 150 airstrikes across northern Iraq, not long after ISIS was evicted from them. We toured the wreckage; we interviewed hundreds of witnesses, survivors, family members, intelligence informants and local officials; we photographed bomb fragments, scoured local news sources, identified ISIS targets in the vicinity and mapped the destruction through satellite imagery. We also visited the American air base in Qatar where the coalition directs the air campaign. There, we were given access to the main operations floor and interviewed senior commanders, intelligence officials, legal advisers and civilian-casualty assessment experts. We provided their analysts with the coordinates and date ranges of every airstrike — 103 in all — in three ISIS-controlled areas and examined their responses. The result is the first systematic, ground-based sample of airstrikes in Iraq since this latest military action began in 2014.

armed Libyan groups are receiving payoffs to stop boats leaving Libya, in exchange for aid, aircraft hangars and money

Laura Thompson of the International Organisation for Migration told AFP on Wednesday that there “are somewhere around 31 or 32 detention centres, and around half are controlled by, or are in the areas controlled by, the government”. She said that nobody knew how many people were being kept in the facilities, where conditions were "extremely bad”.

illegal facilities, directly run by armed militias involved in human trafficking and fuel smuggling, often with the complicity of members of the coastguard service

Male captives are frequently beaten until they can somehow get relatives to send more money to Libya, or else set to work in factories or oil refineries. Women may end up being trafficked sexually.

a UNICEF report released in February, "detention centres run by militias are nothing but forced labour camps, armed robbery prisons. For thousands of migrant women and children, prison is a hell of rape, violence, sexual exploitation, hunger, and repeated abuses."

"Europeans think the problem in Libya is politics,” he says, “but we cannot build a government of national unity without a national army."

“When the centres are overflowing, migrants are taken out, there is no money to feed them all,” Ibrahim says. “Some guards are good people, but some of them are corrupt.”He hints at the tangled relationship which exists between centre personnel, smugglers, militia and human traffickers, which pass desperate migrants between themselves like a resaleable human commodity.The guards at detention centres may take money from the traffickers, then hand the migrants over.Or smugglers tip off the coastguard when their migrants are due to sail to Europe so that they will be captured and passed to militias.Or militias will seize migrants in the streets on the grounds that they do not carry the necessary documentation, a requirement in Libya. “They pretend to arrest illegal migrants and then keep them in their centres without food and water, take their money, exploit them, abuse women,” Ibrahim says.

The coastguard has repeatedly denied that its members are involved in the people-trafficking trade.But a UN report has found that:"Abuses against migrants were widely reported, including executions, torture and deprivation of food, water and access to sanitation. The International Organisation for Migration also reported enslavement of sub-Saharan migrants. Smugglers, as well as the Department to Counter Illegal Migration and the coastguard, are directly involved in such grave human rights violations."

Happiness and Bright's mother - I am never told her name - took all the money that their families could spare, then crossed the Sahara, reached the Libyan coast and paid smugglers to take them to Europe. It was then they were captured and brought to Surman.Happiness says that her friend became ill after Bright was born but received no medical aid. “Now her body is in the nearby hospital. It can’t be sent back to her family. She lost her documents at sea, and her family does not have the money to send the corpse.”

“They use us as slaves, and when we are no longer needed, they throw us away,” he says. "Humanitarian organisations do not come here. Sometimes some locals come to us with soap and bread. But no international."

She too crossed the Sahara, this time to escape Boko Haram. She was determined that her children would not grow up afraid, fearing every day that they would die."I do not care if they [the coastguards] have stopped me, I will try again," she says, looking at her newborn children. "I know it's dangerous. Nigeria is also dangerous. If war does not kill you, hunger will kill you, and here we are prisoners, the same hell. It's worth trying to cross the sea again.”Princess has yet to learn: she will be lucky to escape Libya.

Egypt is not collecting tolls on ships’ passage. And ships, including those operated by Evergreen, have begun to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope.

For now, the knock-on effect of the stoppage is the accumulation of insurance claims and late fees, and delays in the delivery of cargo. But in the longer term, much as it did in the mid-twentieth century, the 2021 blockage of the Suez Canal, combined with the effects of the pandemic, may precipitate a reckoning in how maritime transport operates.

Britain gave a green light to its client, King Abdullah of Transjordan, to send his British-led little army into Palestine upon expiry of the British mandate, to capture the West Bank - which was intended to be the heartland of the Palestinian state. The winners in the war for Palestine were King Abdullah and the Zionist movement; the losers were Palestinians. Around 750,000 Palestinians, more than half the population, became refugees, and the name Palestine was wiped off the map.

When Jordan formally annexed the West Bank in 1950, Britain and Pakistan were the only UN members to recognise it.

Against the backdrop of Black Lives Matter, the reassessment of Britain’s colonial past and the drive to decolonise school curricula, some scholars have leapt to the defence of the British Empire. Nigel Biggar, the Regius professor of theology at the University of Oxford, for example, defends the British Empire as a moral force for good. Referencing Cecil Rhodes and the campaign to remove his statue from Oriel College, Biggar conceded that Rhodes was an imperialist, “but British colonialism was not essentially racist, wasn’t essentially exploitative, and wasn’t essentially atrocious”. The British Empire’s record in Palestine, however, is rather difficult to reconcile with the benign view of the learned professor. 

Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) is by far the most powerful pro-Israel lobbying group in Britain, and its membership includes around 80 percent of Tory members of parliament. Since the May 2015 general election, CFI has sent 24 delegations with more than 180 Conservatives to visit Israel.  The last three leaders of the Conservative Party have been uncritical supporters of the State of Israel. Former Prime Minister David Cameron described himself as a “passionate friend” of Israel and insisted that nothing could break that friendship.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has a slightly more nuanced take on Britain’s record as a colonial power in Palestine. In his 2014 book on Churchill, he described the Balfour Declaration as “bizarre”, “tragically incoherent” and an “exquisite piece of Foreign Office fudgerama”. This was one of the rare examples of sound judgement and historical insight on Johnson’s part. But in 2015, on a trip to Israel as mayor of London, Johnson hailed the Balfour Declaration as “a great thing”. 

Arthur Balfour, the foreign secretary in 1917, undertook to uphold the civil and religious rights of the native population of Palestine. A century later, the House of Commons added national rights as well, voting in October 2014 - by 274 votes to 12 - to recognise a Palestinian state. Cameron chose to ignore the non-binding vote

The Conservative government’s adoption in 2016 of the IHRA’s non-legally-binding working definition of antisemitism falls squarely within this tradition of partisanship on behalf of Zionism and Israel, and disdain for Palestinians.  The definition states: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

The definition does not mention Israel by name, but no fewer than seven out of the 11 “illustrative examples” that follow concern Israel. They include “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour”; “applying double standards by requiring of it a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation”; “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”; and “holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel”. 

antisemitism was singled out for attention and punishment by a Conservative government that is renowned for its intensely relaxed attitude towards Islamophobia. 

Many left-wing Israelis regard Israel as a racist endeavour. B’Tselem, the highly respected Israeli human rights organisation, issued a closely argued position paper in January titled “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid.”

Right-wing Israelis continue to hotly deny that Israel is an apartheid state and reject any comparison with apartheid South Africa. But there is no law against calling Israel an apartheid state, and progressive Israelis do so all the time. Comparisons with Nazi Germany are also not proscribed by Israeli law. Such comparisons are less common in Israeli political discourse, but they are occasionally expressed in newspaper editorials and even by politicians. 

To achieve consensus on the document within the IHRA, it was necessary to separate the statement from the illustrative examples that followed. Pro-Israel partisans, however, have repeatedly conveyed the false impression that the examples are an integral part of the definition.

What the non-legally-binding IHRA document does do, with the help of the examples, is shift the focus from real antisemitism to the perfectly respectable and growing phenomenon of anti-Zionism. Anti-Zionism is sometimes described by pro-Israel stakeholders as “the new antisemitism”. It is essential, however, to distinguish clearly between the two.

The 11 examples make a series of unwarranted assumptions about Israel and world Jewry. They assume that all Israelis adhere to the notion of Israel as a Jewish state; that Israel is a “democratic nation”; that Israel is not a racist endeavour; and that all Jews condemn the comparison between Israeli policy and that of the Nazis.

the definition’s very vagueness confers a political advantage. It enables Israel’s defenders to weaponise the definition, especially against left-wing opponents, and to portray what in most cases is valid criticism of Israeli behaviour as the vilification and delegitimisation of the State of Israel.

Israel is not a democracy. Even within its original borders, it is a flawed democracy at best, because of discrimination at multiple levels against its Palestinian citizens. But in the whole area under its rule, including the occupied Palestinian territories, Israel is an ethnocracy - a political system in which one ethnic group dominates another. 

In the Orwellian world of the post-full-adoption Labour Party, many of the members who have been suspended or expelled for the crime of antisemitism were themselves Jewish. Several Jewish Labour Party members have been investigated since 2016, nearly all on the basis of allegations of antisemitism. This made a mockery of the claim of Keir Starmer, who succeeded the allegedly antisemitic Jeremy Corbyn as leader, to be making the Labour Party a safe place for Jews.  

In the rush to burnish its pro-Zionist credentials, the Labour Party turned against some of its most progressive Jewish members. Moshe Machover, the veteran Israeli British anti-Zionist, was expelled and then reinstated in 2017 after the Guardian published a letter of protest undersigned by 139 Labour Party members, including eminent Jewish lawyer Geoffrey Bindman, dismissing the insinuation of antisemitism as “personally offensive and politically dangerous”.

Anti-Zionism is opposition to the exclusive character of the state of Israel and to Israeli policies, particularly its occupation of the West Bank. Antisemitism relates to Jews anywhere in the world; anti-Zionism relates only to Israel. 

In a letter to the Guardian published in November 2020, a group of 122 Palestinian and Arab academics, journalists and intellectuals expressed their concerns about the IHRA definition. Palestinian voices are rarely heard in the national debate on antisemitism and Israel-Palestine.

Through ‘examples’ that it provides, the IHRA definition conflates Judaism with Zionism in assuming that all Jews are Zionists, and that the state of Israel in its current reality embodies the self-determination of all Jews. We profoundly disagree with this. The fight against antisemitism should not be turned into a stratagem to delegitimise the fight against the oppression of the Palestinians, the denial of their rights and the continued occupation of their land

Another call on universities to resist the government’s attempt to impose the IHRA definition came from an unexpected source: British academics who are also Israeli citizens. I am a member of this group, brought together by outrage at Williamson’s rude and crude intervention. It came as a surprise to discover that there are so many of us but, on the issue of his threat, we were all on the same page, regardless of our diverse academic disciplines, ages, statuses and political affiliations.

Our demarche took the form of a long letter sent in the last week of January to all vice chancellors of English universities and many academic senates. Since then, our letter has been signed by an impressive list of 110 supporters, all Israeli academics outside the UK, including many from Israel. We tried to reach a wider public beyond the academy by publishing our letter in the mainstream media. Our request was either rejected or ignored by no less than 12 national newspapers and other media outlets. We were rather surprised and disappointed that not a single national paper saw fit to publish our letter or to report our initiative. But the letter was eventually published by the Jewish leftist online journal, Vashti.

In our letter, we said: “Fighting antisemitism in all its forms is an absolute must. Yet the IHRA document is inherently flawed, and in ways that undermine this fight. In addition, it threatens free speech and academic freedom and constitutes an attack both on the Palestinian right to self-determination, and the struggle to democratise Israel.”

The Loach affair vividly demonstrates the damage that the IHRA document can do to free speech on campus. The document was used to smear a prominent left-wing critic of Israel and a defender of Palestinian rights, and to try to deny him a platform. The attempt at no-platforming ultimately failed, but it caused totally unwarranted pain to the artist, placed the master of his old college in an extremely awkward position, stirred up a great deal of ill-feeling on both sides of the argument, wasted a great deal of time and energy that could have been put to better use, and, worst of all, in my humble opinion, was completely unnecessary, unjustified and unproductive. All it did was sour the atmosphere around an imaginative cultural event.

it must be emphasised that antisemitism is not a fiction, as some people claim. It is a real problem at all levels of our society, including university campuses, and it needs to be confronted robustly wherever it rears its ugly head. Secondly, it would be quite wrong to suggest that Jewish students who protest about antisemitism are inventing or exaggerating their feeling of hurt. Jewish students genuinely feel vulnerable and have a real need for protection by university authorities against any manifestation of bigotry, harassment or discrimination. 

the definition is implicitly premised on Jewish exceptionalism - on the notion that Jews are a special case and must be treated as such. This gets in the way of solidarity and cooperation with other groups who are also susceptible to racial prejudice, such as Arabs and Muslims. To be effective, the fight against racism needs to take place across the board and not in isolated corners.

Despite its claim to the contrary, Israel does not represent all Jews globally, but only its own citizens, a fifth of whom are Palestinian.

British Jews are not collectively responsible for Israel’s conduct, but the IHRA definition implicates them in Israel’s affairs, and encourages them to target anyone they consider to be an enemy of the Jewish state.

do we need a definition of antisemitism at all? My own view is that we do not. The very term "antisemitic" is problematic because Arabs are Semites too. I prefer the term "anti-Jewish racism". What we need is a code of conduct to protect all minority groups, including Jews, against discrimination and harassment while protecting freedom of speech for all members of universities. 

a deeper similarity, and one that may be more telling: the domestic political dynamic in Israel at the time of the strike, which may be playing out again today

As widely expected, Netanyahu’s political future really depends on one man: his former chief of staff Naftali Bennett. Bennett’s Yamina party has seven seats, meaning that Bennett could either rescue Netanyahu or complete the anti-Netanyahu bloc. If he sits under Netanyahu, Bennett will likely take the defense ministry, a portfolio he briefly held—one year (or about four governments) ago. The timing could work out for both. Bennett needs security credentials, and the defense ministry has historically been a stepping stone to the top job, to which Bennett aspires. Netanyahu, meanwhile, may well be in his final term as prime minister. Both are looking for a legacy achievement, with Bennett aiming to step forward and Netanyahu to step back. The two have reason to combine forces and provide the missing piece of the Osirak moment: a stable coalition government and a hawkish security cabinet.

Like Begin, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has used the media, sabotage, and assassination to delay Iran’s nuclear program over the last decade.

Netanyahu’s political position at home is significantly weaker

From 1977 to 1981, Israel used assassination, sabotage, and unconventional diplomacy to slow down and degrade the Iraqi program. The Mossad launched a media blitz, leaking intelligence to create political pressure against the program. The head of Iraq’s nuclear program was killed in his Paris hotel, and other Iraqi nuclear scientists in Europe met similar fates. French and Italian companies producing components for the program were bombed.

For almost 20 years, Netanyahu has warned the world that an Iranian nuclear weapon is around the corner. For about the same length of time, news outlets, often tipped off by anonymous “senior officials,” have warned that an Israeli strike on Iran is imminent

the United States is backpedaling from its Middle East commitments; the 2015 nuclear deal, a diplomatic framework to contain Iran’s nuclear program, has since been built and collapsed; and Israel and its neighbors have never been closer

The hands of Iran’s disgraced outgoing president, Hassan Rouhani, who negotiated the agreement, are tied: one by a hard-line legislature, and the other by an increasingly hawkish clerical establishment. The Iranian public will vote for a new president in June. According to a University of Maryland poll, while around 75 percent of Iranians supported the nuclear deal when it was signed, barely half of Iranians now approve of it.

Iran continues to drift further out of compliance with the agreement, making irreversible progress with its nuclear research

for several political and regional reasons, it would make sense for Israel to strike Iran sooner rather than later. There are the changing calculations of regional governments, but also the changing fortunes of Israel’s other main foe: Hezbollah. The group still has roughly 150,000 rockets and missiles and a commando force of around 20,000 that could respond to an Israeli strike on Iran. But since Hezbollah is also a political party—an increasingly unpopular one given its role in Lebanon’s economic disintegration—it seems less likely than ever that it would be able to respond on Iran’s behalf and survive politically

today, Iran has the bandwidth to respond to Israel. Were Israel to launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iran would have no option but to punch back. U.S. Central Command estimates that at least a few hundred Iranian ballistic missiles have Israel within their range, which means that those would be the most likely avenue of response. It is most unlikely that Israel could intercept all of the missiles. Yet a hawk would argue, as did Begin, that a barrage of conventional missiles is better than a single nuclear one.

ballistic strikes on Israel would make it politically unfeasible for the Biden administration to resurrect the nuclear deal or withdraw the Trump administration’s sanctions from Iran

Netanyahu is not Begin. And Iran today is not Saddam’s Iraq. The two nuclear programs diverge in significant ways. But the Israeli domestic drivers of the Osirak strike nevertheless offer a striking parallel to the present. If Netanyahu returns to power with Bennett as defense minister, Israel is looking at a hawkish cabinet with an additional dose of ego and political ambition

There are significant gaps of my childhood that I don’t recall at all. The mind protects itself from traumatic events, and if you learn to live with it, trauma can be transformed in productive ways, through art, music, films, and culture.

On calmer days, this multigenerational oppression gives me purpose. It gives me strength to go through life knowing right from wrong, without any doubt. Over the years, it does not break us, but thickens our skin. Despite 73 years of Israel’s brutal force and systemic oppression, the sound of resistance grows louder and stronger within each of us.

I feel stronger than my mother, who rebelled against the Israeli army during the First Intifada. And she was stronger than my grandmother, who was forced out of the city of Ramleh at the age of 12 during the Nakba in 1948, leaving her family and belongings behind. Her brothers were imprisoned by Israel for fighting to keep their own home. Her father, my great-grandfather, died after famously hitting his head against the wall every night from the sadness he carried, after losing his family, his home, his farms, and, eventually, his spirit.

These events are not momentary, they stay with you. Palestinian resistance is not a fight against a singular event, it is a constant state of being

The Second Intifada never ended, just as the First Intifada never ended, just as the Nakba never ended. These events live through every Palestinian. We all feel a continuous incompleteness, but we continue to endure despite Israel’s apartheid. In the face of constant oppression and destruction, we practice love — love for ourselves and love for each other. The violence across Palestine today may be resurfacing our collective trauma, but it is also making our story stronger, and our bond as a people tighter.

As the UAE officially ended its involvement in the Yemen conflict in October 2019 and its military intervention on Khalifa Haftar’s behalf in Libya failed, Abu Dhabi has relied increasingly on crisis diplomacy to expand its international influence

Although the US envoy to the Horn of Africa, Jeffrey Feltman, is currently discussing the dam on a regional tour, President Joe Biden has not committed the United States to a mediation role and recently consulted with the UAE on the Tigray crisis. The European Union has confined its role in the dam dispute to consultations with regional actors, such as Egypt, Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia, while Russia insists that the African Union should resolve disagreements over the dam. Saudi Arabia’s support for Egypt and Sudan’s position weakens the credibility of the Saudi mediation offer, while Egypt is wary of Turkish mediation, as it believes that Turkey provided technical assistance to Ethiopia on constructing the dam.

In addition to the positive precedent set by its successful facilitation of peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea in August 2018, the UAE views its close relationships with all of the conflicting parties in the dam dispute to be a major asset

an anti-UAE backlash that was caused by its initial opposition to Sudan’s democratic transition, recruitment of Sudanese mercenaries in Yemen and Libya and Eritrea’s alleged use of Emirati drones in Tigray.

udan and Egypt are much more likely than Ethiopia to accept Emirati mediation

A former senior US official who is familiar with the dam negotiations told Al-Monitor that Egypt was “forum-shopping” on the dam dispute as it fears a military escalation that could cause Ethiopia to retaliate by attacking Egypt's Aswan High Dam.

On March 3, Dina Mufti, a spokesperson for the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry, said inviting external mediators would demean the African Union’s efforts

Although Qatar’s recent mediation of the Somalia-Kenya maritime dispute underscores the arbitration potential of Gulf countries in the Horn of Africa, the UAE faces an uphill struggle to achieve a major diplomatic breakthrough on the dam.

The 1979 revolution was fueled by both desperate frustration and an abundance of hope. Across the various ideologies and sentiments that shaped the revolutionary movement, there was a common desire to break Iran’s subservience to foreign powers. This desire is often described as anti-Americanism or even anti-imperialism, and while that accurately reflects the language used by the revolutionaries at the time, it is also a reductive view.

under the stewardship of Khomeini, the architect of Iran’s theocracy and first supreme leader, justice was perceived much more broadly. It was primarily about two things: establishing an Islamic system at home and overturning the U.S. dominated status quo in the region, with an emphasis on countering Israel.

Prior to the revolution, the Shah had situated Iran as a bulwark to the Soviet Union and the spread of communism. Iran’s regional relations were driven by Cold War considerations and by the Shah’s desire to transform Iran into the predominant power in the Persian Gulf.

The 1953 coup d’etat was just one in a string of indignities that had been eroding the Iranian national character since the 18th century. It also marked the United States’ entrance into the Middle East, and the beginning of the love-hate relationship between Washington and Tehran.

When war came to Iran, IRGC units were among the first to deploy. With little training and spare resources, their response was sporadic and innovative.What they lacked in capabilities and training, they compensated with zeal and fearlessness. Eventually the IRGC began to use the tactic of “human wave” assaults that showcased those qualities on the battlefield. IRGC forces would charge en masse into Iraqi defenses, overwhelming the defenders by being able to absorb mass casualties without relenting the advance. Iraqis fired until they ran out of ammunition and then were forced to retreat. The IRGC used this tactic to impressive effect, winning battle after battle and eventually forcing a full-scale Iraqi retreat in the summer of 1982

Whereas much of the region and foreign powers were supporting Iraq, Iran was virtually alone in fighting the war, with only Syria providing it any meaningful political support. The war ended as a stalemate in 1988. Iran saw itself as up against the world and it could not overcome the vast amount of support buttressing Saddam Hussein’s Iraq

as Khamenei’s main support base, the IRGC grew into a formidable political actor within Iran, and the primary strategic arm of the regime. Many of the young men who joined the IRGC during the war also rose to become commanders and officers with it. This included Soleimani, who became a rising star in the IRGC’s Quds Force division, which was responsible for all foreign activities and operations

the IRGC shot down a passenger jet, killing everyone on board. The narrative of the assassination was instantly overtaken by the grief and shock of the everyday Iranians who struggled to make sense of a preventable tragedy. Iran’s leaders attempted to skirt blame and cover up the IRGC’s catastrophic error. Family members who spoke out and demanded answers were cruelly silenced. Soleimani’s image was everywhere, yet justice was nowhere to be seen.

Iran knew that both Israel and the United States had to factor in potential attacks by Hezbollah were they ever to strike Iran, and Syria was the lynchpin for Iran’s sustained influence on the Lebanese organization. Syria was therefore key to Iran’s larger deterrence strategy vis-à-vis the United States and Israel

The irony of Soleimani’s successes in Syria and Iraq is that they prepared the ground for the rise of ISIS. The Islamic State’s explosion into Iraq should have been recognized as the product of Soleimani’s myopic view of Iraq and Syria as simply battlegrounds for Iran’s advancement. Yet, Soleimani and the IRGC seized the moment and self-consciously rebranded their enterprise. Iran was the first outside state to support Iraq’s war against ISIS, and Soleimani let the whole world know of his role. What appeared on social media as authentic and spontaneous pictures of Soleimani on the frontlines with Iraqi troops and commanders, was actually a deliberate effort by the IRGC to recast Soleimani’s image. He was no longer a shadow commander, but a MacArthur-esque figure almost single-handedly fighting the dark forces of ISIS. A national hero in Iran, and the savior of Iraq and Syria.

He was killed because he was important. He was killed because Iran was important.

The IRGC increased their investment in Soleimani after his death, using his persona to rebrand themselves and the regime to a new generation. Soleimani became the archetype of the Islamic Republic’s self-conception. His figure symbolizes how the regime desires to be seen by the Iranian people and by the world. Soleimani has been cast as brave, selfless and humble; a warrior, a believer and a patriot. His is a transnational community that connects Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen with Iran. He justifies Iran’s regional activities by casting them as an essential part of Iranian patriotism and national identity. To be Iranian in the narrative promoted by the regime is to be part of a larger Islamic enterprise. Not the umma or global Islamic community, but rather, the resistance: the militant groups and personalities who share the Islamic Republic’s enemies and its political aspirations.

mythologizing of Soleimani has not only been aspirational, it has also been driven by concerns within the IRGC that the regime is losing support and legitimacy among the Iranian people. This is particularly true for the younger generations, which know nothing of the Shah’s brutality, the sense of injustice that enveloped Iran during its war with Iraq, or the hope that accompanied President Khatami’s reformist platform in the 1990s. Instead, what they know is Iran’s 21st century experience, which has been one of near-constant antagonism and increasing privation.

the explosion of protests across Iran in 2018 and 2019. Iran has experienced episodic protest movements in the past, but these protests were different

The IRGC confronted the protests head-on and with unrelenting brutality. Using machine guns, tanks, and direct fire to murder Iranian youths in the streets and hunt them down in alleyways.

There was indeed something personal about Soleimani’s death. No matter what he represented, he was an Iranian. That he was singled out and murdered by a foreign power sat uncomfortably with most of his compatriots, regardless of their politics

It wasn’t until the U.S.-led 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq that Iran was provided an opportunity to change its regional position. Soleimani, who had by then become the leader of the IRGC’s Quds Force, saw opportunity and peril in the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Iran’s allies benefited from the end of the Baathist regime, but a longstanding U.S. military presence in Iraq was also a threat to Iran. Soleimani championed a policy that sought to exploit both the political landscape and the shadows of the new Iraqi frontier. He encouraged political participation of Iran’s Shiite allies while also developing an insurgent network that waged war against the U.S. and coalition forces, killing or maiming hundreds of servicemembers in the process. The effort was largely effective. When U.S. forces departed Iraq in late 2011, Soleimani’s clients were among the most powerful political actors in Iraq and Iran was the most influential outside power in the country.

Just as Apple carried on without Steve Jobs, the IRGC will retain the ability to manage its proxies and exert influence beyond Iran’s borders without Soleimani at the helm. The law of inertia also applies. Unless the IRGC and its proxies are challenged directly, momentum will carry them forward.

Both Lebanon and Iraq have been hit by intense protest movements over the last year, with much of the anger of the younger generations being aimed at the political elite and their foreign backers. Even though Iran’s influence has helped empower Shiite elites in each country, an increasing number of younger Shiites appear to have soured on Iran and blame it for their country’s morass. This is especially true in Iraq, where young Shiites make up the vast majority of the protest movement that has railed against government corruption and the political power of Iran-backed militias

while Soleimani helped expand Iranian influence in the region, that influence rests on shaky ground. The height of Iran’s influence — at least as presently expressed through the IRGC — has probably passed.

Netanyahu associates were quick to issue a clarification, as diplomatic affairs analyst Barak Ravid reported immediately following Kochavi’s appearance, emphasizing that the prime minister is not interested at this stage in a confrontation with the US administration and is in fact seeking to develop an intimate dialogue with the Americans allowing him to present his position

Associates of Gantz and Ashkenazi were less laid back. Both spoke with their American counterparts shortly afterward, Ashkenazi with Blinken and Gantz with incoming Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Al-Monitor has learned that both ministers assuaged their counterparts’ concerns, explaining that Kochavi was not expressing an official Israeli position and that Israel seeks a productive, professional dialogue with the administration to bridge the gaps between them and ensure the closest coordination possible.

disseminated the full text of his speech to all the top IDF brass the following day

Kochavi’s position runs counter to that of most senior Israeli defense and intelligence officials (except for Mossad director Yossi Cohen, whose views are equally militant), who contend that the absence of a nuclear agreement with Iran is more of a threat to Israel than the deal from which the United States withdrew in 2018.

His address was not cleared with his superiors, the security cabinet or the government.

Kochavi’s position collides head on with the understandings that Gantz, Ashkenazi and probably Netanyahu are trying to develop along the Washington-Jerusalem axis.

was the shift professional or shaped by political considerations?

Kochavi’s abilities and charisma make him a natural candidate for Israel’s leadership after the Netanyahu era. In trying to depict himself as more Netanyahu than Netanyahu, he could be signaling that such is indeed his goal

He is building himself up as a defense hawk, a position that has been Netanyahu’s winning card for years.

since 2019, Egypt has become aware that Addis Ababa has been presenting Cairo as a “North African, Arab country” that doesn’t care about the rest of the continent

Egypt’s foreign policy in the Horn is also about re-establishing a security presence over the Bab al-Mandeb, the strait leading into the Red Sea and Suez Canal, where Egypt had grown concerned about the increased presence of foreign powers

By establishing a presence in East Africa, Egypt will have the opportunity to cooperate with international powers that are trying to expand their presence in the region, including the US, Russia, and China, says one of the Egyptian officials, adding that this cooperation could take the form of trade agreements, combatting “terrorism” or controlling irregular migration

Egypt has grown increasingly worried about the role of the Emirates, which has become a major power broker and the principal architect of the security framework in the fiercely competitive Red Sea, with bases in Berbera, Somaliland; Bosaso, Somalia; and several coastal ports in Yemen, where it had fought alongside the Saudi-led coalition since 2015.

while Turkey and Egypt have publicized their quiet rapprochement, Turkey has made its own prominent foray into East Africa: signing a military cooperation with Niger last year; being invited by Somalia, to whom Turkey has long provided aid, to explore for oil in its seas; and holding high-level talks with Ethiopian officials.

A consultant for the Turkish Foreign Ministry’s Africa policy previously told Mada Masr that Turkey’s “developing relations with Ethiopia is a direct answer to Egypt. There are two dimensions. We want to develop our relations with Ethiopia, and we want to develop our relations with an Ethiopia that is stronger against Egypt. A strong Ethiopia against Egypt is something that Turkey wants.”

the American withdrawal appeared to pick up pace on Monday as a US ground convoy carrying troops and equipment out of Syria from the main American base in Kobane “is complete,” coalition spokesman Col. Myles Caggins told Al-Monitor in a statement. “The forces in the convoy will eventually be repositioned throughout the region after a temporary pause.”

“The biggest concern for the US-led coalition in Deir ez-Zor should be force protection,” said Nicholas Heras, a Middle East fellow at the Center for a New American Security. “There is a lot of trial by fire that the US forces will have to directly step into in Deir ez-Zor, and they will not have the YPG as a layer of protection for them.”

The Assad regime has long coveted retaking the oil fields that dot Syria's northern and eastern provinces that have fallen out of Damascus’ hands as IS exploited the turmoil an of eight-year civil war

In February 2018, Russian paramilitaries and pro-regime forces staged a large attack on an SDF-held field, known as Conoco, that left 200-300 dead, after the United States repeatedly warned the Moscow-backed forces to stop their advance.

The Kurdish Red Crescent, the primary provider of medical care in the SDF-held northeast, said on Sunday that the Turkish incursion into Syria had killed 83 people and left 231 wounded since Oct. 9.

Experts worry the administration could be stretching a 2001 legal authority that the US military uses in Syria to combat terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and IS. “My sense is that the footprint you’d keep in the Deir ez-Zor oil fields is not anything like a counter-IS operation,”

with American troops already headed out of the country, protecting oil installations, such as the United States did in the hourslong 2018 battle against Russian paramilitaries and pro-regime forces on an eastern Syrian oil field may prove more difficult.

The plan to reposition American forces into Iraq would face significant bureaucratic challenges, as the number of US troops is capped at 5,200, and the Iraqi government could impose limits on cross-border raids

“Instead of this land reverting to scrub, let’s extend a hand to the Jordanians and say, ‘Let’s work hand in hand. Let’s create joint projects based on the exchange of knowledge. We will employ Jordanians in our orchards and create a joint tourist project centered around the historic power plant. We will create a common future here.’ After all, we are talking about privately owned land, and no one but us can use it.”

“The farmers of Naharayim are paying the price of Jordanian disillusionment with the peace treaty,”

“After the peace agreement was signed, the Jordanians were convinced that they would make progress toward resolving their major problems. They hoped that a Palestinian state would be created, and that their economy would flourish, when what actually happened was the exact opposite of that. Their expectations were not met, and worst of all, Jordan considers the failure to reach some agreement on the Palestinian issue to be an existential threat.”

Susser thinks the Israeli farmers' situation is already a lost cause. “I have a hard time seeing how the Jordanians would go back to the special agreement,” he said. “[Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s announcement that he plans to annex the Jordan Valley didn’t help either.”

“Israel’s rejection of the two-state solution, the situation on the Temple Mount and the fact that the Jordanians feel like Israel is not fulfilling its part of the peace agreement have provided King Abdullah with real grounds to avoid making this gesture to Israel. As far as the king is concerned, there is no reason for him to continue making gestures to Israel when he is not getting what he expects in return.”

incident, yet to be independently confirmed, is the latest involving oil tankers in the Red Sea and Gulf region, and may ratchet up tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia, long-time regional adversaries fighting a proxy war in Yemen, which lies at the southern end of the Red Sea

Though Turkey has “committed” that it will have control of its military and proxy forces, the Pentagon has seen Free Syrian Army units releasing IS prisoners as Kurdish guards have left, another defense official told Al-Monitor on Monday.

Any effort to convince Iraq to take on more US troops would face significant political headwinds. The country has been rocked by nearly two weeks of protests, with young Iraqis pouring into the streets to demonstrate against corruption and poor living conditions, posing a threat to Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi's political future. A growing number of parliamentarians have already called for American forces to leave the country this year. US troop levels in Iraq, currently over 5,000, are capped under so-called "force management levels," though the Pentagon can rotate in more units on shorter missions.

The Pentagon’s top policy official will join Vice President Mike Pence's delegation set to urge Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to cease the Turkish offensive. Undersecretary of Defense John Rood will head to Ankara from within the region to join national security adviser Robert O’Brien and Jim Jeffrey, the special representative for Syria engagement, for the talks. According to a statement, Pence will tell Erdogan that US sanctions on top Turkish officials will remain in place until a cease-fire deal is reached. The Turkish president said on Tuesday that Turkey would “never” agree to stop the assault. 

“People wandering around East Jerusalem might think that they are visiting a Turkish city. There are voluminous amounts of flags, stickers and signage, and the Turkish presence is very obvious. This includes charitable activity. In winter, they distribute heaters, warm clothing and food stamps. Last Ramadan, they handed out $100 to all businesses in the Old City. They are involved in the educational system, they renovate buildings and they organize heavily subsidized and even free trips [from Turkey to Al-Aqsa Mosque]. As someone on the ground here, I am constantly surprised by the scope of this activity."

a neo-Ottoman policy that Erdogan has been promoting over the past few years. Its goal is to bolster Turkish control in Jerusalem

“As far as he is concerned, the fact that the Ottomans once ruled here means that he is no stranger to Jerusalem. He is also challenging Israeli sovereignty in the city. Turkish activity in Jerusalem is his way of engaging in the soft conquest of al-Quds [Jerusalem].”

Israel has decided to put an end to this Turkish involvement in Jerusalem affairs

Israeli experts estimate that another person particularly concerned about the situation is King Abdullah of Jordan, who has a special status in Jerusalem as “Protector of the Holy Sites.” The Foreign Ministry’s statement refers to these Jordanian concerns. “In accordance with the peace treaty with Jordan, the Jordanians have a special status at the Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem. As such, we will not allow Erdogan to interfere with this special status, as they are doing now,” reads the statement.

the growing presence of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs in the Temple Mount compound. They come with lots of money, and their efforts are already bearing fruit. Erdogan’s popularity among the Palestinians is skyrocketing, and the main person to suffer for that is Jordan’s King Abdullah. He cannot compete with the funds that the Turks are pouring in, while his rhetoric on behalf of the Palestinians pales in comparison to Erdogan’s stinging attacks.”

“Erdogan’s ultimate goal is Erdogan himself. He wants to become 'Sultan of all Muslims.' Unlike Iran, for example, which has no access to Jerusalem, Turkey does have access to the city. Israel allows him to operate on the ground and emblazon Jerusalem prominently on his personal banner. This positions him as the greatest Muslim leader in the world.”

“He wants to return to rule over all those lands that were once controlled by the Ottoman Empire. We are witnessing Turkish activity of this kind not only in the Middle East but in the Balkans and Caucasus too

Mordechai Goldman has served for the past few years as the diplomatic and military analyst of the ultra-Orthodox daily Hamevaser. He attended ultra-Orthodox rabbinical colleges and studied psychology at the Israeli Open University. He also participated in the national civil service program. Goldman lectures to ultra-Orthodox audiences on the diplomatic process and on the Israel Defense Forces and consults with companies in regard to the ultra-Orthodox sector.

The UAE is the largest trading partner for Moscow in the Gulf Cooperation Council, with the trade balance reaching $1.7 billion in 2018. Close to 1 million Russian tourists visited the UAE last year, spending $1.3 billion in the country, which puts Russians among the top vacation spenders there

Even if Russia is seen as a risky market to invest in, Abu Dhabi rulers know very well how to make calculated and strategic investments in Russia to win Putin’s favor. In his opening speech at the meeting with representatives of Russian and UAE business circles, Putin welcomed Emirati Tawazun Holding’s decision to take a 36% stake in the Russian luxury car maker Aurus, Putin’s pet project.

everything was made to impress the Russian delegation and demonstrate the kind of exclusivity the Emiratis attach to the relationship with Russia

the frequency of the crown prince’s visits to Russia

While Moscow and Abu Dhabi find themselves on opposite sides on a number of issues such as the role of Iran in Syria, there appears to be a lot of coordination on foreign policy issues between the two governments behind the scenes. When the infamous Seychelles meeting between Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund who is believed to be one of the central figures in forging the Russia-UAE alliance, and Erik Prince became known to the public, it was shocking to many how deep and elaborate ties between Moscow and Abu Dhabi actually are

Moscow finds in the UAE leadership an avid supporter of secular militaristic regimes in the Middle East, which Russia itself heavily banks on. In Libya, Sudan and Yemen, both Russia and the UAE find themselves backing the same forces and oftentimes working together to prop them up

It is highly unlikely that the UAE would have decided to reopen its embassy in Damascus in December 2017 had it not been for Moscow’s clout in Syria and its ability to balance Iran; this gave Russia a further step forward when it came to the legitimization of the Assad government in the Arab world

Israeli intelligence does not conduct surveillance or espionage of any kind in the United States since the Pollard [espionage] affair in the 1980s. That order is sweeping and aggressively enforced. Nonetheless, there is an attempt to understand events in the top echelons of the US administration and a concerted effort to understand what goes on in the head of the commander-in-chief. Now senior Israeli intelligence officials are at a loss.

Israeli intelligence did warn in the past that Trump may get tired of the Iranian story and roll back his policies at crunch time. This scenario is being played out now in front of their eyes.

Netanyahu tried to wring from Pompeo US commitments to maintain sanctions on Iran even if it enters into negotiations with Tehran and tried to hand Pompeo suggested guidelines for an alternative nuclear agreement with Iran if the sides end up engaging in talks on the issue. He also raised concern over Iran’s growing daring in carrying out terror and other attacks against US allies in the region.

Discussions of a defense treaty between Israel and the United States did not pan out prior to the Israeli September elections. Most senior security officials are opposed to a classical style defense treaty. Nonetheless, in order to boost his self-confidence and the basic (albeit crumbling) assumption that the Netanyahu-Trump friendship is a strategic defense pillar for Israel, Netanyahu tried to wrest through Pompeo an unambiguous presidential declaration regarding the US commitment to Israel’s security, as well as a severe warning that will be conveyed to Tehran.