The Atlantic: The End of Netanyahu’s Unchecked Reign

Then, something odd happened: Avigdor Lieberman, who had been Netanyahu’s right-hand man in the 1990s and later served under him as foreign minister and then defense minister, refused to join the right-wing coalition with his small party unless a bill was passed aimed at military conscription of ultra-Orthodox men. This was an act of political theater—the bill would not have changed very much—but to everyone’s surprise, Lieberman held out until Netanyahu’s mandate to form a government expired. Legally, the president of Israel would then have had to task another member of Knesset with forming a government, essentially barring Netanyahu from the role. To prevent this, Netanyahu pushed the Knesset to dissolve itself and call for a second national election in less than six months.[...]

In the elections to the 11th Knesset in 1984, the Alignment (based around Labor) received 44 seats to the Likud’s 41. Neither bloc had a majority. The country was deadlocked, with no coalition in sight. The president at the time, Chaim Herzog, intervened, twisting arms and cajoling both parties to form a joint government. The two parties even agreed to a rotation in the prime minister’s post: Shimon Peres of Labor was prime minister for the first two years, and Yitzhak Shamir of the Likud led the country for another two (and then beyond). The government could agree on nothing in terms of negotiations with Israel’s Arab neighbors, producing a “national paralysis government” in foreign affairs, but it was one of Israel’s most successful governments in terms of domestic policy. Inflation, which hit an astounding 445 percent in 1984, was brought down to 16.4 percent by 1988. Israel also withdrew from most of Lebanon’s territory, downscaling a bloody intervention. [...]

Most Israeli policy would not change with a different prime minister. The basic attitudes of Lieberman, Likud, and Blue and White on Iran, on Hezbollah, on Hamas, on world relations, and even on the prospects of achieving peace with the Palestinians, are all more or less in consensus. A Gantz government would at least hope for a different outcome with the Palestinians and would take a slightly different approach to managing the protracted interim—a small but meaningful difference. But in terms of actionable policy, continuity would be the rule. [...]

In the days leading up to the elections, Amos Harel and Chaim Levinson of Haaretz reported that Netanyahu was actually prepared to launch a major escalation in the Gaza Strip, necessitating the postponement of the election, all without properly consulting the security chiefs. Only after their adamant objections and the intervention of the attorney general, who demanded a proper process for such a decision, was the plan set aside. The cautious Netanyahu of old, who held national security above any other considerations, is simply gone.  

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Haaretz: What Hamas and Netanyahu Have in Common

To his credit, Netanyahu has come to understand what many opportunistic right-wing politicians are not willing to admit: War is not the solution to the confrontation with Hamas. [...]

However, Netanyahu refuses to negotiate with Hamas, arguing that it is as extreme as ISIS, when in fact it is innately different from ISIS, al-Qaeda and other Islamist militants.

The differences between the Hamas and ISIS are manifested in their worldview and actions. There is a profound ideological chasm between them, which leads to mutual denigration, and in some instances, to violence. [...]

Whereas Hamas grudgingly and indirectly accepted Israel’s existence in its new charter of 2017, ISIS and al-Qaeda consider such a compromise to be betrayal. [...]

In order to move beyond Netanyahu’s "no war and no negotiations" gridlock for Gaza and the Israelis living next door, we need to think critically about the underlying assumptions of Israel’s ruling right-wing parties, which reject peace negotiations, yet fail to eliminate terror.

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Al Jazeera: How do Palestinians see the Syrian war?

Throughout their long struggle against Zionism, Palestinian political factions have found support in Syria, often maintaining headquarters on its territory. Traditionally it was leftist, nationalist and Baathist movements in Palestine that were closest to Damascus, but as Hamas and Islamic Jihad came to prominence in the early 1990s and developed close relations with Iran, they also started receiving Syrian support. Syria would give Palestinian groups logistical assistance, training, and political backing to the level that no other Arab country would.[...]

This led to a crisis in relations between the Palestinian authorities and the Syrian regime which ultimately ended with the death of Arafat and the rise to power of Mahmoud Abbas. Since then, Syria has pressed for rapprochement, fearing that the Palestinian Authority could move closer to Jordan and Egypt, curbing its influence over the Palestinian issue. [...]

Hamas took a very different position. After much internal deliberation, it chose to leave Syria as a way to demonstrate its rejection of the Syrian regime's brutal crackdown on popular protests. It joined the axis of the Syrian opposition supported by Gulf states, cutting its relations with the regime and angering Iran.

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Jacobin Magazine: Hard Questions in Israel-Palestine

The fact that, after fifty years of Palestinian support efforts, the Israeli occupation is more entrenched than ever should inspire some intellectual humility among those hawking solutions to the conflict, notes Jamie Stern-Weiner in the introduction to his edited collection Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel-Palestine’s Toughest Questions. It is humbling as well to read through the volume, with more than seventy essays and rejoinders by more than fifty different authors, from almost every one of which something new can be learned. [...]

The reason it cannot be implemented, argues Levy, is the settlers: “The settlers have won. One needs to recognize this, however painful it may be. More than 600,000 settlers will not now or in the future be removed from their homes. Yet without such mass removal, there is no viable Palestinian state, and more important, there is no justice.”

Why no justice? To “leave a single settlement intact … would amount to rewarding those who have undermined international law and violated it so crudely.” After all, “[i]f the settlements are a violation of international law, as they are, then they should be undone, to the last one. Crimes are crimes. There is no retroactive legitimation—not for murder, not for rape, and not for land grab.” [...]

The second problem with Arieli’s proposal is that he says he designed it by taking account of the positions of both sides and then seeking a compromise between them. But he judges the Palestinian position by what Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has accepted as if this reflects actual Palestinian sentiment. However, as Diana Buttu notes, “the president rules by decree; the prime minister has never received confirmation; the parliament has not met in a decade and has not passed a single piece of legislation in eleven years; and the terms of the president, parliament, and municipal councilors expired years ago.”

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Haaretz: Hamas Stands to Emerge Dominant From Possible Gaza Deal – at Abbas' Expense

Two main proposals are under discussion – one presented by Egypt and the other by United Nations special Mideast envoy Nickolay Mladenov. The Egyptian proposal gives high priority to internal Palestinian reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah; to exchanges of prisoners and of bodies of soldiers, with Israel; and to an agreement for a long-term cease-fire, to last from five to seven years, with the first step being a cease-fire within days of signing the accord. [...]

Mladenov’s proposal stresses economic factors and prioritizes the prisoner exchanges. According to this scheme, Israel will allow goods to enter the Strip on a large scale; inject about half-a-billion dollars into its development; establish desalination plants; boost the Strip’s electrical supply; and issue numerous work visas to residents there. [...]

Egypt wants the Palestinian Authority to accept this proposal and move ahead quickly on reconciliation. However, PA President Mahmoud Abbas has presented 14 objections that could derail the whole process. Moreover, Abbas recently appointed Nabil Abu Rudeineh deputy prime minister, which Hamas sees as a step showing the president's opposition to a new, unified government. Without such a government, there can be no reconciliation, and without reconciliation, Cairo will have to decide whether it will disregard the PA and become an even more active partner in an accord. [...]

If this is indeed the outcome of the current talks, it will be a turning point in ties between Israel and Hamas. Israel will have to allow Hamas to conduct extensive business ties with manufacturers in Israel and the West Bank; give more work permits to Gazans, who will also receive permits from Hamas; and redefine the closure on the Strip, which will gradually disintegrate. But more than this: Israel will have to accept the possibility that the new Palestinian government that will be established (if it is established), and will consist of Hamas and the PA, will be granted international legitimacy.

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BBC4 Analysis: The Middle East Conundrum

Edward Stourton asks if there any chance of a long-term solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Tensions have been rising following the move of the US Embassy to Jerusalem and the deadly clashes at the border between Israel and Gaza. The peace process - if it exists at all - seems to be in deep freeze. The idea of a two-state solution does not appear to be getting any closer, while a one-state solution would effectively mark the end of a Jewish state. Does Israel have a long-term strategy?

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The Atlantic: Jared Kushner’s Middle East Fantasy

The first fantasy is the notion that the obstruction of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas—who refused to meet with Kushner on his latest trip—can be countered by taking the peace plan “directly to the Palestinian people.” Kushner suggests that Abbas is avoiding him because he’s “scared we will release our peace plan and that the Palestinian people will actually like it.” That’s not likely. Abbas is indeed unpopular with most Palestinians—his approval rating hovers just above 30 percent—but it’s hardly because he’s too hardline on Israel. In our own extensive discussions with Abbas and his negotiating team as White House Middle East advisers during the Obama administration, we found them deterred most of all by the fear they could not sell further concessions to their people, who were seething about years of continued Israeli settlement expansion, land confiscation, and increased limits on Palestinian movement. And that problem is even greater today. In fact, more Palestinians now oppose a two-state solution than support one, and a majority—57 percent—say that such a solution is no longer practical because of Israeli settlement expansion, which now extends deep into the West Bank. Over 35 percent of Palestinians now support a one-state solution—in other words, a single country with an Arab majority and equal rights for all—a solution increasingly appealing to Palestinians under the age of 30. [...]

But Trump has abandoned even the veneer of objectivity. Just last month, he unilaterally gave Israel one of its most coveted prizes in negotiations, recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, without getting anything in return. To make it worse, he then celebrated the unilateral move of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem—a move opposed by 128 countries at the United Nations—with a big ceremony organized just one day before Palestinians observe the nakba, the catastrophe of their expulsion in 1948. The embassy ceremony was attended by dozens of Republican-only members of Congress and included speeches by evangelical pastors known primarily for bigoted remarks against Mormons, Jews, and Muslims, suggesting the whole thing was more about domestic politics than Middle East peace.

While dozens of Palestinians in Gaza were killed in clashes with the Israeli Defense Forces, the Trump administration chose neither to express sympathy for the Palestinians killed nor to join international calls for Israeli restraint. Trump has, on the other hand, cut financial assistance for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) out of pique that the Palestinians have not given him the requisite “appreciation or respect,” as if humanitarian aid, even when it serves U.S. national interests, should be awarded in return for flattery. His administration has offered unconstrained support for settlements, with an ambassador who has fought against use of the word “occupation” and refers to “Judea and Samaria,” as favored by Israeli settlers, instead of traditional U.S. references to the West Bank. It is no surprise, therefore, that the Palestinians stopped talking to the administration. It is hard to see how the United States under Trump will ever be seen as an honest broker, or be able to go around Abbas, when two-thirds of Palestinians oppose the resumption of contacts with U.S. negotiators and 88 percent view the United States as biased in favor of Israel. [...]

Finally, there is the problem that Israelis under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will almost certainly never agree to the sort of deal that would be necessary to make Palestinian or Arab acceptance even remotely feasible. In the past few years, Netanyahu has stopped even talking about support for the two-state solution, which he first accepted in a highly caveated way in a 2009 speech at Bar Ilan University. A majority of members of the current Israeli cabinet do not even support the creation of a Palestinian state, much less the concessions Israel would need to make to achieve it. And with Netanyahu and his wife the subject of several serious corruption inquiries, the prime minister likely sees his only hope as to keeping that hardline cabinet together to stave off or delay potential indictments. It is far from clear that the Israeli people themselves are prepared to make the major compromises required for peace, including the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of settlers from the West Bank. But it is quite clear that the current Israeli government is not ready to do so. In his interview, Kushner questions whether Abbas has the ability or the willingness to “lean into finishing a deal.” But neither does Netanyahu, and the fact that Kushner only calls out one side is telling. It is itself part of the problem.

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Jacobin Magazine: Why Israel Kills

Palestinian nonviolent protests have an additional virtue. They internally divide Israeli society rather than unite it in hatred and violence, strategically undermining the efficacy of Israel’s favorite political glue: anti-Arab racism. As I write, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem has launched an unprecedented campaign for Israeli soldiers to refuse illegal orders to shoot unarmed protestors. [...]

First: occupied Palestinians have tried unarmed resistance before. The first intifada, in 1987, was, in Edward Said’s words, “one of the most extraordinary anti-colonial and unarmed mass insurrections in the whole history of the modern period.” An entire society mobilized itself and self-organized not only to counter Israeli domination and occupation but to actively build alternative self-governing structures as well. Women, students, teachers, and workers formulated independent modes of resistance (strikes, demonstrations, tax boycotts, etc.) that allowed them to counter Israel’s stranglehold over their lives. Workers realized the Israeli economy was massively dependent on the cheap labor of Palestinian migrants, giving them leverage over Israel’s occupying society. Israeli peace activists, following the lead of Palestinian activists, actively organized against the country’s occupation regime. [...]

Second: the failure of the first intifada and the Oslo Accords generated a groundswell of political cynicism. While governing elites profiteered, the overwhelming majority of occupied Palestinians experienced deteriorating socioeconomic conditions. Settlements grew, closure intensified, freedom of movement was internally and externally restricted or blocked. In these desperate times, the only way many Palestinians felt they could directly get at their occupiers (which had left the big cities in the hands of the PA’s repressive security apparatuses) was violently — through suicide bombings. Palestinian factions began fetishizing such armed resistance. Organized individual martyrdom increased. Though this violent tactic blasted Israel’s security-with-occupation policy, it ended up harming Palestinian society itself and its international image. Israel’s state terror was unleashed even more harshly, in sync with the global fight against Islamic terrorism after 9/11.   [...]

Lastly: if Oslo divided Palestinian society, Israel tried to stoke these divisions into violent eruptions through its security coordination with the PA (fighting Palestinian resistance factions) and through its policy of isolating Gaza and separating it off from the West Bank. Fueling Palestinian conflict ultimately led to Hamas’s violent takeover of Gaza in 2007 and its banishing of the PA’s security apparatus. The schism persists more than a decade later. Hamas is on one side, carrying the old mantle of armed struggle abandoned by Fatah (the PLO’s ruling group) in 1988; Fatah is on the other, carrying the mantle of endless bureaucratic diplomacy and concessions.

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The Washington Post: For Israel, there’s little political cost to killing Palestinians

Israeli authorities claimed they opened fire in response to some protesters who had encroached near the fence, burning tires and hurling stones or molotov cocktails. Footage that emerged from the chaotic scene suggested Israeli soldiers targeted unarmed protesters, including some who were running away and were shot from a distance by snipers. [...]

The killings marked the worst day of violence in Gaza since the 2014 war between the Islamist group Hamas and the Israeli military, in which the United Nations said at least 1,462 Palestinian civilians died. And the aftermath of the protests underscored both the desperate futility of the Palestinian struggle and the relative impunity with which Israel can snuff out Palestinian lives. [...]

“These are the predictable outcomes of a manifestly illegal command: Israeli soldiers shooting live ammunition at unarmed Palestinian protesters,” said Amit Gilutz, a spokesman for B’Tselem, a Jerusalem-based leftist organization that monitors human rights abuses in the occupied territories. “What is predictable, too, is that no one — from the snipers on the ground to top officials whose policies have turned Gaza into a giant prison — is likely to be ever held accountable.” [...]

Nor can the Palestinians look for much help from their neighbors. As we’ve discussed in this space, some of the region’s key powers — most notably Egypt and Saudi Arabia — have moved closer to Israel in recent years. It has become clear that while the stateless Palestinians garner tremendous sympathy from citizens across the Arab world, their plight is a tiresome nuisance for some Arab leaders, who are more keen to crack down on Islamist parties at home or confront Iranian influence abroad.

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Haaretz: Gaza Carnage Is a Propaganda Victory for Hamas – and a Hasbara Nightmare for Israel

Future developments are also in the hands of the Islamic organization. The more Hamas persists with the “March of the Million,” as it has been dubbed, and the more it succeeds in separating the protests from acts of violence and terror, the more it will succeed in defying and embarrassing Israel as well as Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority. If commanders of the Israel Defense Forces don’t find a way to repel efforts to breach the fence without causing so many casualties, Israel’s predicament will grow exponentially. Friday’s day of bloodshed may be quickly forgotten if it remains a solitary event, but if the bloodshed recurs over and over during the six-week campaign that is slated to culminate on the Palestinian Nakba Day in mid-May, the international community will be forced to refocus its attentions on the conflict. Criticism of, and pressure on, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which has virtually evaporated in recent months, could return with a vengeance. [...]

The immediate support of the Trump administration, expressed in a Passover-eve tweet by special envoy Jason Greenblatt, who lambasted Hamas incitement and its “hostile march,” is ostensibly a positive development from Israel’s point of view. Contrary to Trump, Barack Obama would have been quick to criticize what is being widely described as Israel’s excessive use of force, and might have conferred with Western European countries on a proper diplomatic response. Israel welcomes and Netanyahu often extols its unparalleled coordination with the Trump administration, but it could also turn out to be a double-edged sword, which will only make things worse.  [...]

The unqualified U.S. support strengthens the resolve of Netanyahu and his ministers to stick with their do-nothing polices toward both Gaza and the peace process. Most Israelis view Hamas purely as a terror organization, and their gut reaction is that Israel can’t and shouldn’t be perceived as caving in to terror and violence. At a time when early elections seem just beyond the horizon, the last thing Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition wants to do is deviate from its established policies, which would be tantamount to admitting the error of its ways. Calls from the left to review the IDF’s conduct in Gaza and reassess Netanyahu’s policies toward the Palestinians overall could bring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict back to the center of public discourse after an extended absence, but will also provide the prime minister with an excuse - as if he needs one - to divert attention away from the crisis in Gaza to backstabbing internal enemies from within.

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The New York Review of Books: Israel’s War on Culture

The climate in Israel was tense and bellicose. As Hamas fighters fired rockets from Gaza at central Tel Aviv, right-wing Israeli nationalists assaulted antiwar protesters while chanting “Death to Arabs!” and “Death to leftists!” Veteran artists and public figures were labeled as traitors and received threats for even expressing regret at the loss of Palestinian children’s lives. One of Israel’s best-known poets, Natan Zach, now eighty-seven, told the Israeli website Walla! at the time: “The reason I no longer write in the papers is that I’m afraid someone will grab me on the street and beat me.” A month after a cease-fire was agreed, Israel’s then foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, decided it was time for his ministry to cut off all future support for the Israeli dancer and choreographer Arkadi Zaides for a work that allegedly vilified Israel’s military. 

Zaides’s Archive is a solo dance piece set against a backdrop of video footage of Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank. The footage was provided by B’Tselem, an Israeli group that documents human rights abuses in the Occupied Territories and has become anathema to the Israeli political establishment. Last year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled a meeting with the German foreign minister, Sigmar Gabriel, after Gabriel met with representatives of B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence, an anti-occupation organization of former Israeli soldiers who publish testimonies about their service in the West Bank and Gaza. (Israel’s cabinet is currently promoting one bill that would ban members of Breaking the Silence from speaking in high schools, and another that would effectively outlaw them.) [...]

In her position as the country’s leading cultural watchdog, Regev has taken every opportunity to cut funds, or threaten to do so, to artists or institutions she deems harmful or offensive to the state. One of her first acts as culture minister was to levy financial penalties on theaters, dance troupes, or orchestras that do not perform in the settlements—and provide bonus payments to those that do. She has also said that she wanted to pull funding from several established national arts festivals because of performances involving nudity and from fringe theaters presenting subversive content. Although successive attorney generals have told her that her interference infringes on freedom of expression, that has not stopped her from crusading on the motto “freedom of expression, not freedom of funding.” [...]

While few in Israel have heard of Tatour, Israel’s war on culture has recently found a much more high-profile target. On March 13, Israel’s ambassador to France, Aliza Bin-Noun, boycotted the opening night of the Israeli Film Festival in Paris because the program was headlined by Foxtrot, a feature film about the trauma two parents suffer after losing their son during his military service. The film—directed by acclaimed Israeli filmmaker Samuel Maoz, an IDF veteran of the 1982 Lebanon war—has won the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival, swept the Ophir Awards (Israel’s equivalent of the Oscars), and was shortlisted by the Academy Awards (though it fell short of a best foreign film nomination). The story includes a scene in which Israeli soldiers cover up the murder of Palestinians. Although, by her own admission, Regev has not seen the film, she said it “harms the good name of the IDF” and that its selection for leading film festivals is “a disgrace.” And she used the occasion to repeat her threats about funding: “Whoever wants to make a movie like this can do so with their own private money.”

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Haaretz: The Real Oppressors of Gaza's Gay Community: Hamas or Israel?

The discourse driving these claims is predictable. Too often, LGBTQ Palestinians are reduced to victims, stripped of their own agency, and exploited by Israelis to advance Israel’s image around the world as a safe haven for LGBTQ persons. Examples of such practice abound, from campaigns sponsored by the Israeli government and news stories to documentaries and movies. [...]

It’s because of the misery inflicted upon them by Israel’s continued siege and its debilitating large-scale military assaults that rendered Gaza nearly unfit for human habitation, as well as Egypt’s prolonged closure of the Rafah Crossing, the sole gateway into the world for the majority of Gazans. This reality is evidently not on Rozovsky’s radar. [...]

A particularly gross representation of the asymmetry between occupier and occupied Rozovsky appears to affirm is the fetish of Israeli power, where one soldier alleges that Jamil discussed with him the "erotic power of [Israeli] soldiers,” and Jamil apologizes for rocket attacks on Israel to another Israeli he spoke with. [...]

After all, using the fetish of attractive soldiers to downplay the horrors committed by the IDF is not a new trend. In 2007, Maxim Magazine led with a collection of “drop-dead gorgeous” Israeli soldiers who "can take apart an Uzi in seconds," and most recently, the world was greeted by former IDF soldier Gal Gadot, the lead actress in Wonder Woman and a vocal supporter of the IDF. It is no coincidence that Gadot appeared in the Maxim collection. 

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Haaretz: Three Reasons We Aren't Seeing a Third Intifada

In retrospect, the first intifada had been an event waiting to happen. It just needed a spark. The Palestinians at that point, over 20 years after the Six-Day War, wanted to prove to themselves, the Israelis and the rest of the world that they were not prepared to continue sitting docilely by while successive Israeli governments blurred the Green Line and settlements spread, stymieing the prospect of an independent Palestinian state. [...]

The second intifada was a very different affair. It had spontaneous and “popular” elements at first, in the rioting that broke out in Jerusalem following then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount. But from a very early stage it had a much more organized fashion, with the paramilitary groups of the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and other organizations competing with each other to carry out armed attacks on Israeli soldiers and terror bombings against civilians within the Green Line. [...]

In the two intifadas, the uprising took place nearly simultaneously among all three Palestinian communities living under Israeli occupation – the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Currently, not only are these groups physically divided to an unprecedented extent, they also have different agendas. [...]

The PA in the West Bank and Hamas leaders in Gaza are loath to back a new round of all-out violence in their fiefdoms. They still feel they have too much to lose from chaos. Hamas is calling for an intifada, but only in the West Bank and Jerusalem where they don’t have any control. But an intifada in the West Bank will almost certainly mean the end of the PA – and when tens of thousands of officials and security personnel rely on the PA for their livelihood, there is a vested interest to continue coordinating with Israel and keeping a lid on things.

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Jacobin Magazine: Ending a Civil War

The last general elections were held in 2006. When Hamas won, the United States and Israel refused to recognize the results. Israel arrested Hamas parliamentarians, boycotted their government, and imposed sanctions, and the US and Israel both supported Fatah’s attempts to secure power despite the loss. Tensions rose and fighting broke out, ultimately leading to Hamas kicking Fatah out of the Gaza Strip. Fatah wound up governing the West Bank, while Hamas solidified power in Gaza. 

Speaking about the Hamas electoral victory, then-Senator Hillary Clinton said in a leaked recording, “I do not think we should have pushed for an election in the Palestinian territories. I think that was a big mistake. And if we were going to push for an election, then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win.” [...]

Last summer, Abbas announced a strengthening of sanctions — cutting salaries of PA employees in Gaza by 30 percent, reducing electricity supplies to an average of two to three hours a day, and slashing medical funding. Due to the Israeli blockade, unemployment in Gaza hovers around 40 percent and living conditions present a constant humanitarian crisis. [...]

One sticking point is that Abbas has demanded that Hamas’s armed wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, forfeit their weapons to the PA. Abbas said he doesn’t want a situation like that in Lebanon, where Hezbollah maintains their weapons and a large degree of independence from the rest of the state. Hamas leader Ismail Haniya has said his organization will always retain its right to armed resistance, signaling difficult negotiations ahead. [...]

A unity government with parliamentary elections would likely renew interest in negotiations between Palestine and Israel, something Netanyahu would want to avoid. His government has been having a relatively easy time quietly expanding settlements, something a reinvigorated “peace process” would throw into jeopardy.

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Haaretz: In Israel's Eyes, No Palestinian Struggle Is Legitimate

When the Palestinian Authority “unilaterally” joined Interpol – that is, without the Israeli master’s consent – it was framed here as a “diplomatic defeat” on the right, and, shockingly, in the center and the left as well. What reason in the world could there be for people who support the establishment of a Palestinian state to thwart construction of infrastructure and democratic institutions on the Palestinian side?

The minister for environmental protection, who is also minster of Jerusalem affairs, Zeev Elkin, said that “Israel cannot show restraint in the diplomatic war that the Palestinian Authority leadership is waging against us.” Begging your pardon, Elkin, but what does “diplomatic war” mean? The sick logic that has seeped through Israeli political discourse has enabled the appearance of oxymorons like “diplomatic war” and “diplomatic terror.” Diplomacy, after all, is the polar opposite of terror. Those who oppose violent struggle – that is, terror – champion diplomacy. But in Israel, that is also considered terror these days. So what the blazes do Israelis consider legitimate struggle? According to that same superficiality of metaphor with which the concept of terror is treated, we can call what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians “logical terror”: Palestine is not qualified for membership in Interpol because it is not a state, and we’ll never let you be a state. [...]

A historic moment? Don’t make the Israelis laugh. Do wild animals have historic moments? “Fake reconciliations,” Netanyahu disparagingly called the event. “This isn’t Palestinian reconciliation, but rather Abu Mazen [Abbas] cozying up to a murderous terror organization,” Education Minister Naftali Bennett said, as expected. He is a great expert in transferring funds, as the teachers in Israel realized this week. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. That is, it will do everything in its power to prevent the establishment of another democracy.

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Haaretz; Netanyahu, Sole Leader to Endorse Independent Kurdistan, Hits Back at Erdogan for Supporting Hamas

Israel’s support for Kurdish independence is not new; Netanyahu has made similar declarations as far back as 2014. But the timing, less than two weeks before a September 25 referendum slated to be held in Iraqi Kurdistan, makes the Israeli message more than just moral support for the Kurdish people’s desire for an independent state. The statement, the first of its kind to be made by any world leader, is a dagger right in the eyes of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is ideologically and strategically opposed to the establishment of a Kurdish state. [...]

What the Kurdish official means is that Israel’s public statements could portray the Kurds as collaborating with a country defined as an enemy by Iran while they are trying to gain international legitimacy for their cause. “If Israel really wanted to help, it could promote the issue in the White House and get the administration to declare its support for an independent state,” the official said. The White House opposes the referendum as being badly timed. [...]

The war against ISIS has reordered the Kurds’ priorities. If after the second Gulf War their great achievements were joining the Iraqi government, the naming of a Kurdish president for the entire country and a fair share of government budgets, the war against ISIS has fed and nurtured the opposite process – that of separating from the mother country. The Kurds would see independence as worthy historic and national compensation for its large contribution to the war against a terror group that threatens the West.

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Project Syndicate: America’s Dangerous Anti-Iran Posturing

In fact, that seems to be the goal of some US hotheads, despite the obvious fact that Iran is on the same side as the United States in opposing the Islamic State (ISIS). And then there’s the fact that Iran, unlike most of its regional adversaries, is a functioning democracy. Ironically, the escalation of US and Saudi rhetoric came just two days after Iran’s May 19 election, in which moderates led by incumbent President Hassan Rouhani defeated their hardline opponents at the ballot box. Perhaps for Trump, the pro-Saudi, anti-Iran embrace is just another business proposition.

He beamed at Saudi Arabia’s decision to buy $110 billion of new US weapons, describing the deal as “jobs, jobs, jobs,” as if the only gainful employment for American workers requires them to stoke war. And who knows what private deals for Trump and his family might also be lurking in his warm embrace of Saudi belligerence. [...]

External powers are extremely foolish to allow themselves to be manipulated into taking sides in bitter national or sectarian conflicts that can be resolved only by compromise. The Israel-Palestine conflict, the competition between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the Sunni-Shia relationship all require mutual accommodation. Yet each side in these conflicts harbors the tragic illusion of achieving an ultimate victory without the need to compromise, if only the US (or some other major power) will fight the war on its behalf.

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openDemocracy: The vertical apartheid

Indeed, on its fiftieth anniversary, the Israeli occupation seems to be in excellent form. Though the Gaza settlements have been removed, those in the West Bank and East Jerusalem prosper, and settler numbers have been growing at a rate of 15,000 people annually.[2] The domination of more than four million Palestinians has stopped being an economic burden and proven to be profitable. The people under occupation are a captive market (literally) for many surplus Israeli manufactured goods. Private industries, including international companies working in the Jewish settlements, prosper thanks to tax breaks, low rents, government subsidies, and a Palestinian labour force that is rendered cheap and flexible because it enjoys no civil or labour rights.[3] Israel’s international exports – many of them military and marketed as ‘road tested in action’ (on the Palestinians, that is) – are also steadily growing as more nations, including the United States and European states, adopt Israel-like xenophobic politics towards minorities, refugees, and migrants (especially Muslim ones).[4]

Within the Israeli political system there is currently no serious opposition to the settlement project. International diplomacy is largely inconsequential and there is no ‘peace process’ to threaten the settlements’ further expansion. Representatives of the settler movement hold power in all major governmental offices, running not only the occupation, but also the business of the state. International diplomacy is largely inconsequential and there is no ‘peace process’ to threaten the settlements’ further expansion. [...]

Separation, in space and by law, is the most fundamental component of Israel’s system of colonization.[7] Even when settlers, Palestinians, and soldiers are brought together in the same incident, at the very same place, each group is still bound by different laws. The applicable law for the settlers is the Israeli civil law, by which settlers enjoy full Israeli civil rights including the right to vote. The reality for Palestinians is a military dictatorship in which civil and human rights rarely apply.[8] In military courts, where Palestinians are tried, the conviction rates for alleged violence against settlers or occupation forces are 99.74 per cent.[9] [...]

Israeli domination of Palestinians is not confined to the spaces occupied in 1967. In its early decades, Israel’s rule in the occupied territories used techniques of domination that were well-honed on those Palestinians who survived and remained in place during the expulsions of 1948. In recent decades, techniques of domination, land grab and separation, more intensely exercised in the 1967 occupied areas, inspired the further separation of Jews and Arabs within Israel itself. The occupation can thus not be thought of as an aberration of Israeli democracy, a ‘cancerous tumour’ that can be removed by dissecting more or less along the internationally recognized Green Line of 1949, as left-liberal apologists of Zionism propose. Rather, it is a local manifestation of Israel’s regime of domination and separation that extends, in different forms, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. [...]

A Jewish-only road network, the ‘apartheid roads’ started connecting the hilltop settlements with bridges that span over Palestinian fields and with tunnels that burrow underneath Palestinian towns. This type of infrastructure has in recent decades been greatly extended and currently comprises a full third of the total length of roadways in the West Bank.[13] In the last decade, as armed confrontations in the West Bank subsided, some military checkpoints were removed, allowing Palestinians freer movement between their villages and towns. But this movement was undertaken on a separate and tattered road network that, whenever crossing the Jewish network of highways, bows and bores underneath them. While the Jewish road network leads everywhere to Israel, the Palestinian road network is truncated on all sides by walls, checkpoints, and military zones.

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Al Jazeera: Analysis: The implications of the Qatar-Turkey alliance

Shortly after Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates severed diplomatic relations with Qatar and closed their airspace to commercial flights, Turkey condemned the blockade against Qatar, sent food stocks to stave off possible shortages in the country, and fast-tracked legislation through parliament to deploy Turkish troops on Qatari soil. [...]

A key ally of Qatar, Turkey is setting up a military base in the country - the first Turkish overseas military installation in the Middle East. Qatar also hosts the largest US airbase in the Middle East, Al-Udeid, where around 10,000 military personnel are stationed.

The defence cooperation between Doha and Istanbul dates back to 2014, when the two nations signed an agreement aimed at helping them confront "common enemies". [...]

They have both also refused to classify the Muslim Brotherhood movement and Hamas as "terrorist organisations" and backed rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. [...]

Furthermore, Turkey's disputes with several of its fellow NATO partners have prompted Ankara to seek new partnerships and diversify its alliances to counterbalance the country's dependence on its traditional Western allies.

Turkey already has a presence in Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo whether through peacekeeping, humanitarian or other missions. In addition, Turkey is also reportedly setting up a military training camp - said to be its largest overseas facility - this year in Mogadishu, Somalia. The camp will be used to train Somali soldiers in the fight against the al-Shabab group.

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Al Jazeera: The Hamas problem

Furious after Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian elections, the US and Israel pushed for a regime change in Gaza, clearly a Hamas stronghold. The 2007 attempt to depose Hamas was led by Palestinian security chief at the time, Mohammed Dahlan. That plot was, in fact, financed by the UAE to the tune of $30 million that ultimately ended in disaster and consolidated Hamas' power, while expelling Dahlan and his co-conspirators from Gaza. [...]

However, regional players astutely observe that the main obstacles to Dahlan's coronation are the current PA president, Mahmoud Abbas, and his political movement, Fatah, as well as Hamas. While overcoming the objections by Abbas and Fatah would be relatively easier due to the massive leverage Israel, the United States and other regional actors have over them, the acquiescence of Hamas and other groups to the installation of Dahlan, they reasoned, would have to be achieved through economic, political, and military measures, including pressuring their current Qatari patron. [...]

Since Hamas is considered the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the threat of this movement was, fairly or not, extended to Hamas. For political and strategic reasons, Saudi Arabia offered support to Islamist groups, especially the Muslim Brotherhood, for decades. But ever since the Arab Spring phenomena, this marriage of convenience was abandoned in favour of a bitter rivalry that became enmity.

Furthermore, the Saudi regime has claimed twice to have been undermined by Hamas. The first occurred when Hamas did not accept the so-called Arab peace initiative for resolving Israel's colonisation of Palestinian land, initially promoted in 2002 by then Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. And secondly, the Saudis blamed Hamas for the failure of the 2007 Mecca reconciliation talks between Fatah and Hamas - brokered by the late King Abdullah, even though other players, particularly the US and Israel, played a crucial role in blocking it.

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