Category Archives: Lands

In Gaza, rubble lies on top of rubble

Matthew Duss writes: Two weeks ago saw the latest blow to the on-again-but-mostly-off-again reconciliation between the two leading Palestinian political factions, Hamas and Fatah. A Fatah delegation from the West Bank entered Gaza for what was planned as a weeklong visit to address the sticky issue of payment to some 40,000 Hamas government employees, which was one of the main drivers of Hamas’ decision to accept a reconciliation agreement in April 2014, largely on Fatah’s terms. Instead, the Fatah delegation stayed only one day, departing after claiming that Hamas had prohibited it from traveling from their beachfront hotel to their offices. Hamas, for its part, responded that the makeup of the delegation had not been appropriately cleared in advance.

A few days later, as Israelis celebrated their Independence Day, the first rocket was fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip in four months. An Israeli tank barrage into Gaza followed shortly after.

It was not the first rocket launched since the August cease-fire that ended Operation Protective Edge, the summer of 2014’s hugely destructive Israeli assault on Gaza that lasted 52 days. Back in February, Hamas lobbed two rockets into the Mediterranean, ostensibly to test their launch system and intimidate Israel. Omar Shaban, a Palestinian analyst who runs the small think tank, PalThink, in Gaza, had a different interpretation. “They’re sending you a message,” he told me. “You should be wise enough to hear it.”

The message is that Gaza is creeping toward another explosion. It’s a depressingly similar pattern. Just like after previous conflicts, Israel’s cease-fire demands have been met. Hamas has prevented rocket fire, while the group’s demand for an end to the blockade that has suffocated Gaza for nearly a decade has not. Last month I visited the coastal strip to view the damage from the summer’s war, assess the state of reconstruction, and explore the possibilities of reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah.

I’d last been to Gaza in February 2012. There have been two wars since then, in addition to a number of smaller incursions and exchanges of fire. In February 2012, much of Gaza City remained in rubble from December 2008-January 2009’s Operation Cast Lead. This time, there was rubble lying atop the rubble.

Shaban pulled up next to a huge pile of broken cinder block and twisted metal. “Here’s the Finance Ministry.”

Despite Hamas’ role in the escalation that led to the war, however, polls have shown that the group retains a significant measure of public support. One poll taken immediately after Operation Protective Edge found, for the first time since 2006, Hamas would best its rival Fatah in both presidential and parliamentary elections. Part of this has to do with Hamas being seen, unlike Fatah, as a party willing to fight the status quo. Part of it has to do with Hamas’ strategic distribution of resources to activists and supporters. But it’s also related to the fact that their civil servants are actually respected for the work that they continue to do in hugely difficult circumstances. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

David Cameron has become Benjamin Netanyahu’s most vocal international backer

Peter Oborne writes: Mr Cameron’s views on foreign policy, and in particular the Middle East, are completely different to those he used to hold 10 or 15 years ago.

Back then he was conservative in the old-fashioned sense of the term. He was sceptical of foreign adventures and pretty well immune to popular clamours.

He only voted with reluctance for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. During the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006, he permitted William Hague, his foreign affairs spokesman, to describe Israeli conduct as “disproportionate,” a sentiment which led to open revolt among some pro-Israeli supporters of the Conservative Party.

Today David Cameron is a neoconservative. Along with President Sarkozy of France, he led the way in the Western intervention in Libya four years ago. Eighteen months ago he wanted to intervene militarily against President Assad, and was only deterred by a parliamentary vote.

One mark of neoconservatism is uncritical support for the state of Israel. Mr Cameron has become the most vocal international backer of Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr Cameron has gone out of his way to repeatedly defend the conduct of Israeli forces during the Israeli invasion of Gaza last year.

Mr Cameron regularly seeks advice from Tony Blair. Mr Blair was one of the circle of advisors urging David Cameron to bomb Libya. In foreign policy terms, David Cameron should indeed be seen as a protege of the former prime minister. Both men have been steadfast supporters of the Gulf dictatorships and of Netanyahu’s Israel, and both men are unbendingly hostile to democratic movements within Islam, in particular the Muslim Brotherhood.

David Cameron has protected Tony Blair. Had Mr Cameron wanted, he could have insisted on the publication of the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War, which is expected to contain damning criticisms of Mr Blair.

This investigation was meant to publish its conclusions within 18 months of the British withdrawal from Iraq in 2007: it is disgraceful that eight years later, Sir John Chilcot is still at work.

Before the 2010 general election, David Cameron also promised an investigation into the very serious allegations that Britain was complicit in torture and extraordinary rendition during the Blair premiership. Instead the investigation has been suppressed.

So what happened to the foreign policy realist I used to talk to a decade and more ago? I believe that part of the explanation lies in David Cameron’s near total lack of knowledge of the world beyond Britain when he was elected prime minister. Beyond beach holidays in the Mediterranean it was negligible.

This ignorance created a vacuum which has been filled by the small, well-knit and very powerful clique of neoconservatives who surround the prime minister. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Houthi rebels agree to 5-day cease-fire in Yemen

The New York Times: Yemen’s Houthi rebels said on Sunday that they had agreed to a five-day cease-fire proposed by Saudi Arabia that would allow desperately needed humanitarian relief supplies to be delivered to the country, according to a Houthi-controlled news service.

The Houthis’ acceptance of the cease-fire came as a Saudi-led military coalition bombed the private residence of Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen’s former president and the Houthis’ most important ally in the war. Mr. Saleh apparently survived the attack on his residence, in Sana, the Yemeni capital.

In its statement accepting the cease-fire, the Houthis said the group would “respond” to any violation of the truce by “Al Qaeda or those who stand with them.” The Houthis frequently assert that their opponents, who include southern separatists; supporters of Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, Yemen’s exiled president; moderate Islamists; and more hard-line groups, all belong to Al Qaeda.

Facebooktwittermail

Russian soldiers quit over Ukraine

Reuters reports: Some Russian soldiers are quitting the army because of the conflict in Ukraine, several soldiers and human rights activists have told Reuters. Their accounts call into question the Kremlin’s continued assertions that no Russian soldiers have been sent to Ukraine, and that any Russians fighting alongside rebels there are volunteers.

Evidence for Russians fighting in Ukraine – Russian army equipment found in the country, testimony from soldiers’ families and from Ukrainians who say they were captured by Russian paratroopers – is abundant. Associates of Boris Nemtsov, a prominent Kremlin critic killed in February, will soon publish a report which they say will contain new evidence of the Russian military presence in Ukraine.

Until now, however, it has been extremely rare to find Russian soldiers who have fought there and are willing to talk. It is even rarer to find soldiers who have quit the army. Five soldiers who recently quit, including two who said they left rather than serve in Ukraine, have told Reuters of their experiences.

One of the five, from Moscow, said he was sent on exercises in southern Russia last year but ended up going into Ukraine in an armored convoy.

“After we crossed the border, a lieutenant colonel said we could be sent to jail if we didn’t fulfil orders. Some soldiers refused to stay there,” said the soldier, who served with the elite Russian Kantemirovskaya tank division. He gave Reuters his full name but spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he feared reprisals. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Weapons inspectors find undeclared sarin and VX traces in Syria – diplomats

Reuters: International inspectors have found traces of sarin and VX nerve agent at a military research site in Syria that had not been declared to the global chemical weapons watchdog, diplomatic sources said on Friday.

Samples taken by experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition and Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in December and January tested positive for chemical precursors needed to make the toxic agents, the sources told Reuters on the condition of anonymity because the information is confidential.

“This is a pretty strong indication they have been lying about what they did with sarin,” one diplomatic source said. “They have so far been unable to give a satisfactory explanation about this finding.”

Facebooktwittermail

2.2 million Iraqis displaced by ISIS

The Associated Press: Conflicts and violence worldwide displaced a record 38 million people in 2014, with 2.2 million Iraqis alone forced to flee the Islamic State group, a Norwegian humanitarian group report released Wednesday revealed.

The findings of the study carried out by the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Center are endorsed by the United Nations refugee agency.

In a joint statement, they said 11 million were newly displaced last year — mostly because of conflicts in Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo. That’s the equivalent of 30,000 people each day.

Facebooktwittermail

Saudi Arabia announces cease-fire in Yemen

The New York Times reports: Saudi Arabia announced on Friday that it would halt its bombing campaign in Yemen for five days beginning on Tuesday, in a sign that it was bowing to international pressure to ease a worsening humanitarian crisis in a country battered by weeks of war.

Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir of Saudi Arabia said the cease-fire would begin at 11 p.m. Tuesday. Mr. Jubeir, who spoke at a news conference in Paris with Secretary of State John Kerry, said the success of the cease-fire was contingent on cooperation by the Houthis, the Yemeni rebel group that has been the target of a Saudi-led military offensive that began in late March.

“It is our hope and our desire that the Houthis will come to their senses,” Mr. Jubeir said. The Houthis did not react to the cease-fire proposal later on Friday. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Britain’s election quake has opened chasms David Cameron will struggle to bridge

Jonathan Freedland writes: In his victory speech outside Downing street, David Cameron reaffirmed his promise to stage a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union. That will happen before the end of 2017, which means a two-year-long campaign to get Britain out of the EU is under way now.

Those who marvelled at the power of last year’s plebiscite on Scottish independence to stir the deepest questions of identity and belonging should brace themselves. Just such a debate is coming to the entire UK, one that will rouse profound and unresolved questions. What is Britain’s place in the world? Where do we really belong? Are we one of many – or do we stand alone?

The party that was set to lead the case for “in” has been crushed: the Liberal Democrats will not bring much firepower to this coming contest. It will require a huge effort of will for Labour to regroup and marshal its resources for such an epochal fight. Meanwhile, Ukip – heartened by the nearly 4m votes and 12.6% share it won on Thursday, even if that translated into just a single seat – will be hungry for the battle of its life.

There is no date on the calendar for the other union struggle, but it is coming too – a contest over the union that binds the four nations of these islands. A party committed to Scottish independence is now Westminster’s third-largest, a nationalist force in parliament unseen for a century. The success of the SNP is the transformative, historic event of the 2015 election. The question now is not so much whether Scotland will break away from the UK, but rather what would have to happen to make a country that has voted en masse for a nationalist party not leave the union. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The new face of Israeli extremism: Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked

Ayelet Shaked -- "Angel of Death"

Ayelet Shaked — “Angel of Death”

Foreign Policy reports: Last summer, thousands of Israelis shared a Facebook post published in Hebrew by little-known right-wing lawmaker Ayelet Shaked.

An excerpt from an unpublished article written by pro-settler Uri Elitzur, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s onetime chief of staff, who passed away in May 2014, the post was published in English translation on a blog on the anti-Zionist website ElectronicIntifada.com. The author of the blog post claimed that the 631-word excerpt called Palestinian children “little snakes” and accused Palestinian mothers of raising their kids to become violent martyrs. And, the blog post said, it read as “a call for genocide” of the Palestinian people.

Shaked, at the time a junior member of the right-wing, nationalist Jewish Home party, quickly defended the post and argued that the translation was unfair, though she later removed the post from her Facebook page.

But the damage was already done. The story was soon picked up by American news outlets, and Turkey’s then prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, even used the incident as an occasion to describe her politics as no different from the Nazi Party. “What is the difference between this mentality and Hitler’s?” he said.

The episode didn’t end Shaked’s political career. Instead, it immediately raised her public profile — and her popularity among voters who share her skepticism about the intentions of the Palestinians and who fiercely oppose ceding the land necessary to create a Palestinian state.

Her rapid ascent to the highest reaches of the Israeli political system hit a new peak Wednesday, less than a year after that controversy, when the 39-year-old computer engineer and mother of two was given control of Israel’s Justice Ministry. Shaked got the post as part of a desperate last-minute deal that saved Netanyahu from a looming deadline that could have lost him his seat. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The biggest and most embarrassing failure British polling organizations have ever had

John Lanchester writes: Hands up if you saw that one coming. I confess that I didn’t. The first line of the BBC announcement, ‘Conservatives largest party’, was no shock. Then there was a pause a few seconds long, and the projection of 316 Tory seats came up. I nearly fell off my chair. From that point on, the surprises only got bigger.

Why was it so surprising, though? If you’d asked me six weeks ago what was going to happen, I’d have said, a little reluctantly, that the likeliest outcome was a Tory minority government. From that point to an outright majority is a step, but not a gigantic one. If I’d been granted a glimpse ahead to the result, I’d have said the Tories did better and Labour worse than expected, but not amazingly, bizarrely, unforeseeably so. The thing which turned this into such a blindsiding shock was the fact that the election campaign was so flat and eventless. For six weeks, nothing happened. The numbers refused to move. Then everything happened at once. The talk in politics these days is all about ‘narrative’ and ‘momentum’, but there was almost no sign of that in this election. There was little evidence that the electorate were paying any attention. The Tory campaign worked spectacularly, but did so in a new and peculiar way: it was like a pill that the patient refuses to swallow, and holds off swallowing, and then downs all at once.

First-past-the-post is not especially fair, but it is supposed to deliver clear outcomes. In 2010, it didn’t. This time, against all expectations, it did. Lots more detail will come in over the next weeks as the data are analysed and the political scientists do their thing, but for me, a couple of things really stand out. If Labour had retained all of their 41 Scottish seats, the Tories would still be the majority government. So that must mean Labour got creamed in England, yes? Actually, no. Labour’s share of the vote in England went up by 3.6 per cent. That’s more than the Tories: their share of the English vote only went up by 1.4 per cent. Labour could even claim that they won the English campaign, in the same sense that the British army could claim it won the Charge of the Light Brigade. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

George Galloway loses his seat in Bradford West to Labour’s Naz Shah

News Statesman reports: George Galloway, the Respect party’s only MP, has lost his seat in Bradford West. He was trounced by Labour candidate Naz Shah, selected for the seat after the original candidate, Amina Ali, stood down after four days. Shah won by a majority of over 11,000, more than doubling Galloway’s result and bettering his majority in the constituency’s 2012 by-election.

Shah gained notoriety early in the campaign for an open letter explaining her motivations for standing. Shah’s mother was a victim of domestic violence who was imprisoned for murder after killing her husband, and in the letter the Labour candidate explained that her selection was “not really about me, it’s the dream of my mother”.

Shah also wrote about her own forecd marriage at age 15, which Galloway then called into question during his campaign. As Aisha Gill explained in a piece for us earlier this week:

Despite George Galloway’s success in courting female Muslim voters in Bradford in the 2012 election, he has failed to grasp the context and complexities of forced marriage, and has proven insensitive to Shah’s own history of abuse….

In many ways, the stories of Naz and Zoora Shah are reflected in the experiences of Muslim women in Britain, especially in terms of domestic violence and castigation of the victim rather than the perpetrator. I hope that the people of Bradford, including the women, will challenge the patriarchal structures deeply embedded in Bradford West and come out in droves to vote on 7 May.

Galloway is also accused of tweeting out his party’s exit poll before voting ended yesterday, which is against electoral laws, and was reported to police by Bradford Council’s returning officer. West Yorkshire Police is reviewing the incident.

Facebooktwittermail

Rise of Jaish al-Islam marks a turn in Syria conflict

Middle East Eye reports: The seizure of large swathes of Syria’s Idlib province by opposition fighters has signalled for many a change in the balance of power in Syria’s seemingly unending civil war.

While previously many had been predicting that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was on the verge of reasserting his authority over the country, the loss of the cities of Idlib and Jisr al-Shughur and the continuing consolidation of opposition control throughout the province have led to suggestions that Assad is being put on the backfoot.

Jaish al-Islam (JAI) has been one of the major groups involved in operations in Idlib, making up part of the Battle of Victory operations room that took the city of Jisr al-Shughur in later April, a group which also includes the al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front.

Abdurrahman Saleh, head of JAI’s international media office, was one of the group’s early devotees.

“I am from Aleppo – I was a member of a rebel group fighting the regime and we joined Jaish al-Islam to organise our work against the regime, to get what we want,” he told Middle East Eye.

“But our work with Jaish al-Islam does not mean we are seperated from Syrian society. We are part of the Syrian revolutionaries, we fight under the banner of Jaish al-Islam as a revolutionary Syrian group. Not for anything else.”

JAI formed after a merger involving around 60 groups, including Liwa al-Islam, and is itself one of the main components of the Islamic Front – a group of Gulf-backed fighting groups – and are thought to be second only to Ahrar al-Sham in terms of power and numbers.

The Islamic Front issued a charter in 2013 (prior to Jaish al-Islam’s joining) that laid its principles for the creation of an Islamic-rooted society in which Islam would be the “religion of the state, and it is the principal and only source of legislation.”

However, Islamic Front have been careful to position itself within a nationalist framework, rejecting the “near enemy/far enemy” internationalism of al-Qaeda and the state-building project of the Islamic State (IS).

For their part, JAI are thought by analysts to command as many as 60 battalions, with around 20,000 fighters – entirely made up of Syrians, according to Saleh, rather than foreign volunteer fighters. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The Gulf’s failure in Yemen

Farea Al-Muslimi writes: Since late March, a Saudi Arabia-led military coalition has been bombing Yemen extensively in an attempt to push back the Houthis, an insurgent Shia group, and their ally, former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The coalition’s goal is to force the Houthis to retreat and to weaken Saleh’s hold on power. But so far, the only definitive outcome of the war is civilian devastation: At least a thousand Yemenis have died, thousands more have been injured, and hundreds of thousands have been forced to flee their homes.

Even if the Gulf countries do eventually succeed in driving out the Houthis, their intervention in Yemen is actually a sign of their failure, particularly Saudi Arabia’s. In effect, the richest country in the Arab world has had to bomb the poorest one to change its political dynamics. One might even go as far as to say that the current crisis in Yemen is a direct result of regional inaction over the last few years, if not decades.

In 2011, the Arab Spring pushed the country to the brink of civil war as protestors sought to oust a stubborn Saleh. The United Nations intervened by crafting a model for a peaceful transition with the support of six countries from the regional Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The initiative led to a successful handover of presidency from Saleh to interim leader Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, but at that time, the Gulf States were not deeply invested in the process and only played a limited role in the power turnover. They had other preoccupations. Saudi Arabia, for example, was consumed with supporting Egypt’s own leadership change, and other Gulf countries were attempting to topple President Bashar al Assad’s regime in Syria.

These same countries watched from the sidelines as this UN-administered GCC project unraveled. After Saleh’s exit, the gradual power transition focused on building consensus among Yemen’s elites. Hadi proved an incompetent leader, unable to provide either physical or economic security to an unstable country. Over the years, while Hadi and the UN envoy to Yemen, Jamal Benomar led the peace process, busying themselves with meetings in the capital’s five star hotels, armed groups like the Houthis began to take over large swaths of the country. Here, the international community is also to blame. Last year, in attempt to stop the Houthis’ violent spread across Yemen, the UN Security Council sanctioned the group’s leaders with travel bans and asset freezes. But since the targeted figures never travelled outside Yemen and dealt strictly in cash, the sanction was a joke. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Yemen through its literature: A nation besieged

Nahrain Al-Mousawi writes: The recent Saudi-led bombing campaign against Yemen has been reduced to a simplistic narrative of a Sunni-Shia divide driving national conflict – reminiscent of an essentialist “clash of civilizations” trope. This sectarian paradigm attributes all conflict to the notion of cultural boundaries developed over centuries-old divides. Although limited in publication and certainly by translation, Yemeni literature (and lack thereof) functions, on the other hand, as a prism of a nation riven by years of occupation, civil war, corruption, and poverty – issues that far transcend the simplistic sectarian narrative willingly peddled by the media. While the isolated, impoverished nation struggles to negotiate a fraught economic and political terrain, poetry and verse have never ceased to dominate the country’s cultural landscape.

Despite the sparse landscape of Yemeni publishing, a hopeful assessment emerged earlier this year in the Yemen Times – that is, before the Saudi intervention: “Despite ongoing political and economic turmoil, national literature [in Yemen] saw an unexpected surge in 2014. Twenty novels were published by Yemeni authors last year, and while that figure may seem insignificant in a regional or global context, it is considerably more than the eight books produced the previous year. Indeed, it is about ten percent of all the books ever published by Yemeni writers, and considering the hardships facing the country today it is an extraordinary achievement.”

As in other Arab countries, the 20th century signalled the popularity of short stories and novels alongside poetry. Yemeni literature in translation has been less available, and literary works translated to English are a mere handful. However, they serve as a prism reflecting a complex history of authoritarianism, resistance, transnational ties, and a critique of gender conventions. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

How the California drought is increasing the potential for devastating wildfires

Time reports: California’s four-year drought has already cost the state billions of dollars and placed thousands of jobs at risk. Now scientists say it has the potential to strengthen wildfires that could destroy homes, affect watersheds and cost hundreds of millions of dollars to extinguish during the warm summer months.

“We are seeing wildfires in the United States grow to sizes that were unimaginable just 20 or 30 years ago,” U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell told lawmakers this week. “We expect 2015 to continue the trend of above average fire activity.”

In part because of the increased risk caused by drought, the Forest Service anticipates spending as much as $1.7 billion and mobilizing more than 10,000 people to fight wildfires this year. More than 120 wildfires have occurred on National Forest land in California already this year, according to a Forest Service spokesperson.

Climate change, at least in part, lies at the heart of growth in both the frequency and severity of wildfires in recent decades. Higher temperatures have left forests throughout California dry and flammable, according to Wally Covington, a forest ecology professor at Northern Arizona University. Tree death, another product of the drought, has also increased the chance of wildfire. More than 12 million trees in California forests have died and more are expected to do so soon, according to a Forest Service report. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail