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Ed Webb

Israel "to build security barrier between West Bank and Jordan" - Telegraph - 0 views

www.telegraph.co.uk/...ween-West-Bank-and-Jordan.html

MEPP Israel Palestine israelpalestine settlements borders diplomacy

shared by Ed Webb on 04 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Benjamin Netanyahu is planning to build a security barrier between the West Bank and Jordan in a move aimed at asserting Israel's control over the borders of a future Palestinian state. The fence would extend from the Dead Sea to near the southern Israeli city of Eilat and would reinforce Israel's determination to maintain a presence in the strategic Jordan Valley, despite fierce Palestinian opposition. The Israeli newspaper, Maariv, reported that Mr Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, had ordered work to begin as soon as another fence currently being built on the country's southern border with Egypt's Sinai Peninsula is completed. An Israeli official confirmed to The Telegraph that the barrier was under consideration but said that a final decision had yet to be taken. Addressing Sunday's cabinet meeting, Mr Netanyahu said a continued military presence in the Jordan Valley was "first and foremost" among Israel's security needs "in case the peace frays".
  • "These security arrangements are important to us. We will insist upon them," he said. "First and foremost, the security border of the State of Israel will remain along the Jordan River."
  • In another development certain to trigger Palestinian outrage, Israel issued tenders for 1,859 settlers' homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank on Sunday, according to Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlement group.
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  • The move came after Israel last week approved 5,000 new settlers homes as well as a national park in East Jerusalem in what was depicted as an effort to stave off Right-wing criticism of the release of 26 Palestinian prisoners, freed last Tuesday as part of an agreement concluded last July to re-start long-stalled negotiations.
Ed Webb

Why Narendra Modi's Quest for Global Coronavirus Cooperation Won't Work - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...-india-coronavirus-cooperation

India pandemics cooperation regionalism G20 analysis

shared by Ed Webb on 18 Apr 20 - Cached
  • Modi has the right idea to be pushing for more global coordination, but the obstacles he faces underscore the limit of multilateralism today—even amid a rapidly spreading pandemic that badly requires a global response.
  • By projecting India as a leader in crafting global responses to the coronavirus when others are not stepping up to the plate, Modi can demonstrate that his country is not a global actor to be taken lightly. More broadly, New Delhi can telegraph a message that India is a responsible and collaborative global player with the capacity to spearhead global cooperation to address shared threats.
  • India is quietly trying to make a case for having the capacity to galvanize a global response in the same way as China—as a convener but also a goods provider. Last month, India sent 15 tons of medical supplies to—ironically—China when Beijing was still getting hit hard. This month, it dispatched doctors to the Maldives and more recently Nepal. On the heels of the SAARC videoconference, it is also sending supplies to Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka. India’s foreign affairs ministry says it is considering aid requests from Iran and Italy, two of the world’s hardest-hit countries. And Israeli media report that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu requested Indian masks and other supplies during a call with Modi in mid-March.
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  • Modi’s efforts to spark international responses to the coronavirus may also be rooted in a desire to alter the way his government is perceived abroad. New Delhi has suffered blow after blow to its global image in recent months following a series of controversial policy moves. These include the revocation of the autonomy of India-administered Kashmir; the passage of a new citizenship law that critics believe discriminates against Muslims; and the government’s silence in the face of India’s most deadly communal violence in several decades. This has garnered negative international media coverage and criticism from political leaders around the world who fear New Delhi is taking the world’s largest democracy in an authoritarian direction.
  • While his regional initiative has enjoyed some forward movement, thanks to several SAARC states having pledged modest contributions to the new emergency fund and India’s deployment of assistance to South Asian states, it will inevitably be hobbled by the India-Pakistan spat. During the videoconference, Pakistani Health Minister Zafar Mirza called on India to change its policies in Kashmir in order to prevent the spread of the coronavirus there—a comment that didn’t sit well with New Delhi.
  • Modi’s push for the G-20 videoconference could end up benefiting Beijing—a G-20 member with more capital and resources for global outreach than India—by giving it a high-powered forum to amplify its messaging
  • most countries are understandably too focused on the coronavirus at home to focus on coordinated responses abroad
Ed Webb

Adviser says Trump won't rip up Iran deal, signals he may not move embassy | The Times ... - 0 views

www.timesofisrael.com/ignals-he-may-not-move-embassy

US USA Israel Palestine israelpalestine MEPP Iran nukes foreignpolicy

shared by Ed Webb on 11 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • adviser to President-elect Donald Trump said the new US leader will “review” the Iran nuclear agreement, but will stop short of ripping up the landmark international pact.
  • signaled that Trump might not move the US Embassy to Jerusalem immediately and indicated he would make negotiating an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal a priority right off the bat.
  • appeared to represent a break with some comments made by other Trump advisers and the president-elect himself, and highlighted persisting confusion over what the contours of a Trump administration’s foreign policy may look like
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  • Phares also told the BBC that while Trump was committed to moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as other presidential candidates have vowed, he would not do so unilaterally. “Many presidents of the United States have committed to do that, and he said as well that he will do that, but he will do it under consensus,”
  • State Department spokesman Mark Toner warned that nothing was stopping Trump from tearing up the agreement, rebuffing comments from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani that the pact was enshrined by the United Nations Security Council and could therefore not be canceled by one party
  • Toner said if Trump pulls out of the agreement, it could fall apart and lead to Iran restarting work toward a bomb
  • “He will take the agreement, review it, send it to Congress, demand from the Iranians to restore a few issues or change a few issues, and there will be a discussion,” Phares added. “It could be a tense discussion but the agreement as is right now — $750 billion to the Iranian regime without receiving much in return and increasing intervention in four countries — that is not going to be accepted by the Trump administration.”
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 11 Nov 16
       
      Note that it is a multilateral deal, so five other powers would also have to agree, as well as Iran itself.
  • Phares did not elaborate on what consensus would be sought for such a move, which would break with decades of precedent and put Washington at odds with nearly all United Nations member states.
  • Earlier Thursday, Trump Israel adviser Jason Dov Greenblatt told Israel’s Army Radio that the president-elect would make good on his promise. “I think if he said it, he’s going to do it,” Greenblatt said. “He is different for Israel than any recent president there has been, and I think he’s a man who keeps his word.
  • Phares also indicated efforts for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal would be a top agenda item for Trump, casting doubt on a claim by Greenblatt that Trump would not necessarily prioritize trying to push the Israelis and Palestinians into peace negotiations.
  • “He will make it a priority if the Israelis and Palestinians want to make it a priority,” Greenblatt said. “He’s not going to force peace upon them, it will have to come from them.”
  • The gap in signals coming out of Trump’s camp is consistent with frustration some have pointed to in trying to demystify what Trump’s foreign policy will be.
  • Tzachi Hanegbi, a minister-without-portfolio who is a close confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Thursday that the Iran nuclear deal and construction over the Green Line — the two most contentious topics between the Obama administration and Netanyahu — will no longer be a source of tension between Israel and the United States under a Trump presidency.
Ed Webb

'Trump thought I was a secretary': Fiona Hill on the president, Putin and populism | US... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...trump-putin-populism-interview

US USA IR diplomacy Russia analysis politics globalization liberalism populism UK Britain

shared by Ed Webb on 12 Jun 20 - Cached
  • one of a handful of people to have stood at the nexus of these three disastrous governments, to have been in the room to witness Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Boris Johnson operate
  • “It’s a story really about how the US, UK and Russia have all ended up in the same spot weirdly, not just in terms of Covid-19 but also populist politics and many of the same out-of-control inequalities,”
  • In her view populist governments are useless at handling complex problems of governance, almost by definition
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  • What interests Hill is how the three such different countries end up in the same boat, run by populists and significantly less able to cope with a pandemic than their neighbours. She believes the critical common factor is the heady rise, and then the catastrophic collapse, of heavy industry and the failure of their governments to manage the fall and cushion the impact on their people.
  • when you’re coming from the north of England, you are completely network-poor – you have no idea of how to go about it. It’s all about mentorship and connections
  • In all three countries, the government did little to mitigate the pain, leaving afflicted families to move to where the jobs were. In practice, the barriers to mobility – vast distances and bureaucracy in Russia, house prices in the UK – kept them anchored. Even in the US, the bursting of the housing bubble in 2008 made movement harder. And in all three countries, the ties of family obligations and social networks kept people rooted in place without prospects, and educational opportunities to change your destiny have withered away.
  • “If you’re in the north of England it’s probably easier to move to Australia, Canada or America and start again, like some of my family did, rather than trying to find a job in the south,” Hill said. “House prices in the north-east were so ridiculously low vis-a-vis in London or the south.”
  • In both the UK and Russia, the planners had built new towns as part of the great industrialisation drive, which suddenly had their economic lifelines cut off and were left to wither. Hill felt another echo when she visited the American midwest, where her in-laws lived. The great cities built on steel and automobiles had died, leaving hollowed-out communities.
  • At the interview in London, only she and another northern girl, a farmer’s daughter from Sunderland, took the time to chat to the secretary. It turned out that the secretary was part of the selection panel, and it was the two northerners who won the fellowships.
  • “Populism provides a narrative for people who have lost their identities that were tied to meaningful work,” she said. “When people lose that then they’re looking for something. There’s a feeling they’ve been robbed and deprived of a golden age, and they want that back and populist politics feeds upon that, and provides scapegoats for losing it.”
  • “Liberal democracy hasn’t been delivering,” she argued. “If I go back to my home town, it’s still no better than it was when I was growing up in terms of opportunity. The shops are boarded up in the main street. Nothing new is coming in. There’s just no kind of sense of optimism. And when I visit my relatives here in the US in Wisconsin and other places, there’s a lot of sense of: the rest of the world is kind of moving on and leaving us behind. People see that as being closely associated with liberal democracy.”
  • “Trump didn’t look up when I came in and I don’t think he looked up the whole time I was giving my spiel about the terrorist attack,”
  • Trump had decided he wanted a press release and assumed Hill, one of the few women in the room, was there to type it up.
  • “It’s not like the first time I’ve been mistaken for a secretary. I’ve been mistaken for many things, believe me,”
  • “A lot of this stuff which is described as policy is really all about personal fighting … And it’s kind of a comedy of errors, with all this intriguing. It’s very reminiscent of Kremlin intrigue and the kind of intrigue around No 10 in the UK – people always trying to do each other in.”
  • She argues Trump’s desire to forge a personal relationship with Putin is no different from his approach to the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, or the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, or Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. “He wants to be like he was as a CEO, he has all these discussions with people in private … He has a very informal style with everyone. Putin is similar. He just tries to engage with people in the way that he thinks kind of fits them best,” she said. “Boris is the same. It’s like the guy in the pub. It’s less getting into the weeds of the substance in some sort of formal way, and more two guys talking.
  • “He wanted to treat Putin the same way he treated Xi or Netanyahu. He wanted to be able to pick up the phone and talk to them.” But Putin could not be treated like the others. The Trump campaign had dozens of contacts with Russian officials or Kremlin intermediaries, and the candidate had appealed to Moscow to interfere in the election by hacking Hillary Clinton’s emails. Furthermore, as Hill made clear in her biography of him, Putin has taken all the skills of his long KGB career with him to the Russian presidency. And the Kremlin was constantly outmanoeuvring the White House, arranging events so that Trump would be alone with Putin with only the Russian president’s translator in the room. The state department, which stuck to rigid protocol rules on whose translator should be where and when, was being played.
  • In her efforts to have US career officials included in Trump’s meetings with Putin, she found herself facing determined resistance from inside the president’s entourage, as they became more and more distrustful of career officials as disloyal potential whistleblowers.
  • It gave Russians unnecessary leverage
  • He has torn up one arms control agreement after another with the result that in less than a year’s time, there could be no limits left on the world’s major nuclear arsenals.
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