Hezbollah: A systematic violator of international law

By Eli Bar-On

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As Prime Minister Netanyahu outlined during his presentation to the UN General Assembly, Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, one which draws its influence through systemic violations of international law. 

In early August, a powerful blast caused by the detonation of an enormous quantity of ammonium nitrate stored at the Beirut port, shook the entire Lebanese capital, killing at least 190 deaths, thousands of injuries and causing devastating damage to property.

While an investigative report into the explosion has yet to be published, many Lebanese protesters have been pointing fingers at Hezbollah as the prime culprit for the explosion. Circumstantial suspicion of Hezbollah's responsibility for this tragedy is predicated upon the organization's well-known control of the port, and its pattern of storing ammonium nitrate for terror purposes in various locations around the world; including Germany, Cyprus, the UK, and Thailand. This tragic incident reminds the world of Hezbollah's malign activities and violations of the law in general, and international law in particular, in Lebanon, the Middle East and throughout the world.

Hezbollah was established in 1982 as an Iranian-backed terror organization. Since then, it has gained growing political power in Lebanon. By the elections of 2018, Hezbollah and its political allies had won the majority of seats in the Lebanese parliament. At the same time, Hezbollah's military wing has morphed into a fully-equipped and well-trained modern army. In many ways, Hezbollah is operating as 'a state within a state' in Lebanon.

As was explicitly admitted by the organization's Secretary-General, Hassan Nasrallah, the lion's share of Hezbollah's budget, some 700 million dollars a year (a decrease from past years), comes directly from Iran. An estimated 200 million more dollars comes from illegal international Hezbollah activities, such as the trafficking of narcotics and money laundering.  

In recent years, the organization has been struggling to deal with international sanctions that were imposed on its funding, mainly by the U.S..

Hezbollah in its entirety has been designated as a terror organization by a growing number of countries, which recognize that there is no distinction whatsoever between its political and military wings. Prominent countries that have banned Hezbollah in its entirety include the U.S., the UK, Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, Germany, Lithuania, Israel and several Latin American countries. The Arab League has also declared it a terror entity, as has the Gulf Cooperation Council. Unfortunately, the European Union, which has only designated the military wing of the organization as a terror group, has yet to follow suit, creating an obstacle in the effort to disrupt Hezbollah's overseas activities. 

Hezbollah's footprint in global terrorism has been enormous ever since its inception. While many of its terror plots have been foiled, examples of its deadly attacks include the 1983 Marine Corps barracks attack in Beirut, the 2012 Burgas bus bombing, and mass casualty bombings of Jewish and Israeli targets in Argentina in the 1990s. Hezbollah terror cells are active around the world. 

In Lebanon itself, Hezbollah is a non-state actor that has gradually come to take control of Lebanese state institutions. After the Hezbollah-led bloc took control of the cabinet and parliament in 2019, and following the organization's growing penetration of state budgets and ministries, it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish between Hezbollah and Lebanon. 

Lebanon is either unwilling or unable to take control of this rogue organization, and both Lebanon's and Hezbollah's systematic violations of UN Security Council resolutions go unchallenged.  

Resolution 1559, passed in 2004, called for the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias. Resolution 1701, passed during the 2006 Lebanon War, calls for full respect of the Blue Line (the border demarcation between Lebanon and Israel, declared by the UN in 2000), and the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon. It also stipulates that the area south of the Litani River must be free from armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of UNIFIL (the UN's observer force in the area) and the Lebanese Military. These resolutions have been violated continuously in various ways, both by Lebanon and Hezbollah. 

Hezbollah continues to store weapons across southern Lebanon – whether received from Iran and Syria or produced internally. It continues to develop its program to produce precision guided missiles. In the whole of Lebanon, Hezbollah, replenished by Iran since the 2006 war, has an arsenal estimated to be as high as 170,000 projectiles. 

Armed Hezbollah operatives maintain a presence on the Blue Line itself. In April 2017, in a tour that was organized by Hezbollah, foreign and Lebanese media documented armed Hezbollah operatives on the border with Israel. UNIFIL later said it did not see them.

The Green Without Borders organization is a Hezbollah front group that purportedly advances an environmental agenda, but which is linked to the terror organization, and maintains at least 16 known posts along the Israeli border that are manned by armed Hezbollah operatives. 

Following the September 2019 missile attack on an IDF vehicle near Avivim, northern Israel, a UNIFIL investigation found that the attack was launched from a location next to a Green Without Borders post, an area UNIFIL says it has no access to. 

Hezbollah will sometimes organize "protests" by civilians that it rallies to the border, who occasionally cross into Israeli territory and carry out operational missions. It also uses goat herders for reconnaissance gathering missions. Moreover, it attacks and harasses UNIFIL observers and prevents them from gaining full access to any point along the Blue Line on a regular basis. 

In December 2018, the IDF exposed six Hezbollah cross-border tunnels, which were intended to enable thousands of elite terror operatives to cross into Israel and massacre civilians. The tunnels represent another blatant violation of Resolution 1701. 

While the Lebanese Forces and the Lebanese government were supposed to disarm Hezbollah according to UN Security Council resolutions, the opposite is happening. Hezbollah is infiltrating the Lebanese army, and increasingly using its assets, as well as those of the Lebanese government. During a 2016 Hezbollah parade in Syria, armored personnel carriers taken from the Lebanese army were put on display. 

The Prime Minister was correct. The growing menace of Hezbollah must be tackled, not merely for the sake of Lebanon's neighbors, including Israel, but for the sake of the Lebanese themselves. They have borne the brunt of Hezbollah's flagrant violation of international law once already this year. Let that be no recurrence of such suffering. 

Eli Bar-On concluded his career in the Israel Defense Forces holding the position of instructor at the IDF National Defense College (the INDC). Prior to that position, Bar-on served as the Deputy Military Advocate General of the IDF (2012 to 2015), where he was in command of approximately 1,000 lawyers and legal experts, including prior to, during and following Operation Pillar of Defense & Operation Protective Edge. He also served as the Chief Legal Advisor for the IDF in the West Bank from 2009 to 2012.

WHEN DESIGNING CURRICULUM ON INCLUSION, INCLUDE THE STUDY OF ANTI-SEMITSIM

By Jennifer Shulkin

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In the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the nation’s calls for racial justice, many American schools have rightly committed to implementing new ethnic studies and race relations lesson plans into their curriculums. These curriculum changes encourage students to contemplate how prejudice towards and discrimination of marginalized groups of people remain infused into many aspects of our present-day world. They prioritize honest discussions about race. Yet even as inclusion becomes a higher priority than ever before, there is great risk that teaching about the dangers of antisemitism will fall by the wayside. Excluding antisemitism from this wave of anti-prejudice teaching would be a grave mistake.

The subjugation of African Americans is a unique stain on American society, and it deserves thorough treatment in American schools. I am not inviting relativistic comparisons between the African American story (or any other minority group’s story) and the Jewish story; I am only suggesting that each of these stories deserves to be told. The Jewish people have faced rampant and often deadly antisemitism in every generation and all over the world. American schoolchildren should know.

Antisemitism is easily recognizable when a shooter targets a synagogue in Pittsburgh, an attacker stabs a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Monsey, or a vandal draws swastikas on playgrounds. But these heinous tragedies are often written off as rare occurrences, when in fact antisemitism is far more pervasive. 

I am not an educator and know little about designing school curriculums. But I am a third generation Holocaust survivor. I am also a former prosecutor. And in that role, I learned both about how the justice system disproportionally affects black and brown people and how hate crimes embody a special type of evil. Antisemitic hate crimes reported to the FBI rose by 40 percent from 2014 to 2018. And of the 364 hate crimes reported in New York in 2019, 148 targeted Jewish people. These are staggering numbers.

Crime is not the only way that antisemitism surfaces today. College students have increasingly experienced antisemitism on campus – mainly in the form of open and outspoken anti-Zionism, which more often than not is a thinly veiled disguise for antisemitism. Separately, some people have blamed the Jews (without any logic or proof) for the global coronavirus outbreak.  As a result, antisemitism cannot be dismissed as merely a relic of our history books.

Yet to understand the antisemitism of today, educators must present antisemitism’s history. Without exploring past persecution, we cannot expect schoolchildren to recognize the warning signs of rising antisemitism today or in the future. 

New race-conscious lesson plans will generally include topics like the theft of Native American land and culture, the Jim Crow era, and the Japanese internment camps. In that spirit, these lesson plans should also include the slaughter of the Jews in Russian pogroms, the systematic murder of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust, and the widespread housing and university admissions discrimination against American Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries, as a start. 

School lesson plans should not separate distinct racial groups and draw distinct lessons from each episode of discrimination explored. Instead, the plight of various racial groups should be taught in a way that recognizes the overlapping features and patterns of discrimination so that schoolchildren can identify them when they come across them in their own lives. The fact that Jewish persecution is the world’s oldest and most geographically widespread form of hatred is instructive: Antisemitism is a mutable virus, and its many mutations and various chapters each carry valuable lessons about prejudice, hate, and race relations.

Many school districts and private institutions throughout the country have quickly responded to this spring and summer’s uproar over racial injustice by already incorporating race relations lessons into their curriculums this fall. Others have not yet done so, but are considering doing so in the future. 

There is danger in antisemitism being excluded (or demonized) in these new curriculum changes, as was the case in California’s first ethnic studies plan. The California plan valorized the BDS movement (an organized boycott of Israeli goods and services) and painted Israelis as colonizers. It also presented the “Black Hebrew Israelites” (a group known for preaching antisemitism) as an important religious movement to cover. Moreover, while an entire lesson plan was devoted to Islamophobia in the United States, there was not even a definition of antisemitism to be found in the glossary. The curriculum seemed to include every minority group except the Jews.

Many people today believe that antisemitism is separate from and less insidious than classic racism, but it is one of the world’s oldest and deepest forms of hatred. American schools must understand it as such to ensure that the next generation can recognize, define, and reject antisemitism going forward. 

As we rework school curriculums to be more inclusive, please do not exclude antisemitism.

Jennifer Shulkin is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of Pennsylvania. She has served as a former judicial law clerk in the Eastern District of New York and an assistant district attorney in Manhattan. She currently works as a white-collar criminal defense attorney in Washington, DC.

Can regional peace bring the Palestinians to negotiations

By Jeremiah Rozman

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Many predicted that Israel’s August 2020 breakthrough with the UAE would likely have a cascading effect. Since then, Israel has seen positive developments with Oman, Malawi, Chad, Morocco, Kosovo, Serbia and now Bahrain. Saudi Arabia opened its airspace, and Sudan’s ambassador hinted at the potential for thawing relations. President Trump predicted Israeli peace with up to nine countries soon to follow.

Some lament that peace with Arab countries reduces the pressure on Israel to pursue peace with the Palestinians. Palestinian leadership understands this. By demonstrating that Israel will not be compelled into concessions, regional peace provides the best hope yet for Israeli-Palestinian peace. 

Israel’s accords with Egypt and Jordan provided peace without free movement of goods and people. The Abraham Accords between the UAE, Bahrain and Israel, is the first Arab-Israeli “warm” peace. It was achieved without stipulations regarding settlements or a two-state solution, showing that Israel’s legitimacy and diplomatic progress will not be held hostage to indefinite Palestinian intransigence. European support and rare U.S. bipartisan enthusiasm for these accords, reinforces this conclusion.

A sign at the anti-Netanyahu “Balfour Protests” in Jerusalem read in Hebrew, “Bibi, make peace with Mars next.” The protestor argued that peace with countries not at war with Israel is less important than peace with the Palestinians. One could be forgiven for not viewing the lack of peace with the Palestinians as a personal failure of the current prime minister. None of Israel’s leaders have achieved it because the Palestinian leadership’s ideology does not allow productive negotiations. The “moderate” Palestinian Authority (PA), is unwilling to officially relinquish territorial demands in the event of a peace treaty, while obliterating Israel as a sacred duty, is a core tenet in Hamas’ charter.

The oft-repeated maxim “one makes peace with one’s enemies, not friends,” is misleading. One cannot make peace if the opposing side does not seek peace. Therefore, Israel acted rationally when it tabled futile attempts to make peace with entities ideologically opposed to a pragmatic negotiated agreement.

The only way to compel a non-state militant organization to abandon absolutist ideology central to their raison d'etre, is by credibly threatening them with decisive defeat. Despite possessing the firepower, Israel is too constrained to credibly threaten the Palestinians with military defeat. Since Israel cannot achieve peace through military victory or negotiation, its sole remaining realistic strategy has been management of the conflict. Israel has been pursuing this strategy with increasing success since the Oslo peace process collapsed in a bloody intifada. 

Israel manages conflict with the PA through a robust military presence, and security cooperation with an entity that benefits from quiet in terms of power and wealth and relies on the Israeli military to keep Hamas from overthrowing it as it did in Gaza. Israel manages conflict with Hamas with effective denial strategies including: active defense, physical barriers, intelligence, and controlled violence. 

Regional peace between Israel and its neighbors holds the possibility of changing this dynamic. It provides a pathway to socializing the Palestinian leadership to pursue pragmatism by threatening them with decisive political defeat in the form of rendering them irrelevant should they continue their intransigence.

Fear of irrelevance has driven Hamas, Hezbollah and the PA to engage in rare direct talks to figure out how to contend with Israel’s flourishing regional relations. Meanwhile, Israel actively seeks peace with neighbors whose ideology does not supersede shared interests. Hence, we see cascading peace between Israel and Arab countries that seek to be part of a prosperous and secure alliance with Israel and the United States, and fear Iranian aggression over Israel’s non-existent threat to them. 

Israel’s successful peace with its neighbors threatens to leave the Palestinian movements without a rationale. It is a sign of impotence that Palestinian factions have responded to the threat posed by peace, with “days of rage.” Palestinian leadership spoke of betrayal, livid that the Arab League failed to support them in opposition to the peace deals. 

On the day that the accords were signed on the White House lawn, both Hamas and Fatah issued bellicose statements slamming the peace deal, as terrorists fired rockets from Gaza. A senior Fatah official threatened, “peace begins in Palestine and war begins in Palestine.” This has been proven false. The longstanding truism that regional peace begins with an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty, is collapsing. 

The new alignment in the Middle East will likely be durable. UAE’s minister of state for foreign affairs promised to foster relations with Israel irrespective of a change in U.S. leadership. With Israel’s acceptance in the region likely to be permanent, the Palestinians will face a choice; be left without a state, without attention, and without the ability to secure one through pressure or violence, or abandon their absolutist agenda in order to negotiate productively.

Although Israel agreed to forestall applying sovereignty in the territories for at least four years, creating a Palestinian state requires direct negotiations. Palestinian rejectionism would likely ensure that in four years’ time, whether Israel decides to annex or not, facts on the ground will make a Palestinian state increasingly unlikely. 

The longer Palestinian leadership hesitates, the less likely they are to gain. There is the possibility that the Palestinian people will overthrow their leadership for failing to act in their interests. However, predicting uprisings is not easy. Perhaps when Abbas retires, his replacement might bring to power a PA leadership that puts pragmatism above ideology. This would require them to be the first Palestinian leader to not view a territorial final status agreement as an act of treason.

There is no guarantee that the Palestinians will succeed in putting pragmatism over ideology, despite this being necessary for breaking the paradigm of status quo management which favors Israel, obtaining sovereignty, and achieving peace. However, by unmistakably demonstrating that continued intransigence threatens to leave them by the wayside without harming Israel, peace between Israel and its neighbors poses the best chance for socializing the Palestinians into an entity capable of making peace. 

Jeremiah Rozman currently works as the National Security Analyst at a DC-based think tank. From 2006-2009 he served as an infantryman in the IDF. His regional expertise is in the Middle East and Russia. He designed and taught an undergraduate course on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Does the Israel-UAE Deal Presage a New Era of Limited American Involvement in the Middle East?

By Grant Newman

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Normalization between Israel and the United Arab Emirates is arguably one of the most significant events in Middle East politics since the establishment of the State of Israel. The deal itself is a victory for Middle East peace; that this deal could lead to more such agreements between Israel and other Arab nations is a victory for world peace. Within a month of the Israel-UAE deal, Kosovo and Bahrain have both followed the example of the UAE and agreed to open relations with Israel. Surely, more of Israel’s regional neighbors will follow: It is difficult to see Bahrain recognizing Israel without Saudi permission, and so perhaps Saudi Arabia is in line to recognize Israel as well—a crowning achievement after decades of tension. 

To the extent that the Trump administration played a role in the Israel-UAE deal, this is arguably the biggest foreign policy accomplishment for an American president in decades. Indeed, in a different era, the Israel-UAE deal would likely be grounds for awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Trump and his Israeli and UAE counterparts. By comparison, it would be difficult to argue that Trump does not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize now for facilitating an actual normalization of ties between Israel and an Arab state, but that Obama did deserve the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, just one year after being elected president and one year before the Middle East entered its most bellicose decade in recent memory. If Obama’s legacy is an award without the peace, then Trump’s legacy might very well be a peace without the award.  It is now the duty of the Norwegian Nobel Committee to determine which of these two variations is the more noble preference.

Comparing the Trump and Obama presidencies suggests that an American president can have a tremendously beneficial influence on Israel’s relations with its neighbors, or he can have an equally detrimental influence. The role of the American president in the Middle East peace process is a tool and, as with any tool, it can be used for good or evil: A hammer is just as necessary to drive a nail as it is to remove one, and just as necessary to build a house as it is to demolish one; what matters is the intent of the carpenter holding the hammer.

In geopolitical terms, with the support of the Trump administration, Israel has built a model for normalizing relations with its neighbors. The UAE is the first country to follow that and by doing so has set an example for other Arab nations to emulate. But the gains witnessed during the Trump presidency could be wiped away by a future American president who derails the peace process—even with the best of intentions. It is not difficult to see how this could happen: The Israel-UAE deal undermined at least two tennets of Washington establishmentarian thinking about Middle East peace, namely that peace in the region would require (1) concessions to Iran, and (2) concessions to the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria and to Hamas in Gaza. As the Israel-UAE deal suggests, resolving disagreements with the Palestinians is not a necessary condition to peace with other Arab nations, and combating the threat from Iran is of much greater importance to nations in the region than establishing a Palestinian state. However, it is possible that a future American president could revert back to establishmentarian thinking and (1) make efforts to strengthen Iran (perhaps by resurrecting the Iran nuclear deal), and (2) demand that Israel make concessions to the Palestinians as a condition for American support for any future Israeli-Arab peace deal. Such a reversion to the Washington foreign policy establishment's conventional wisdom could derail the broader peace process.

This possibility causes one to pause and think: Inasmuch as the role of the American president in the Middle East can still be used for ill purposes, the question must be asked whether it is in Israel’s interest in particular—and in the interest of Middle East peace in general—to diminish the role of the American president in Israel’s relationships with its neighbors. Now that there is a roadmap to regional peace, Israel must minimize any risks that could hinder progress towards that goal. A model has been developed and a permission structure has been established in the form of UAE, Kosovo, and Bahrain recognizing Israel. The model must now be implemented and replicated. Perhaps this will require less involvement from future American presidents.

Just as the Israeli president plays a mostly symbolic role in Israeli politics, with the executive powers of the state delegated to the prime minister, perhaps it is wise to modify the role of the American president in the Middle East peace process to a mostly symbolic one that serves to guarantee any peace deals entered into by Israel and its Arab counterparts, with Israel retaining the power to conduct negotiations and enter into deals.  Reducing the role of the American president in this way is perhaps one method for (1) preserving the peace achieved over the past four years and (2) protecting against any changes in Middle East policy from a future American president; a limited role would curb a future American president’s ability to derail the peace process. 

Nevertheless, it is possible that the current peace process will proceed according to plan regardless of what a future American president does. Indeed, if a future American president were to, say, resurrect the Iranian nuclear deal, then this change in policy might only serve to hasten a normalization of relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors as they work to fortify their region against a resurgent Iran. With Israel and its regional neighbors entering into deals without American involvement, this undoubtedly would have the effect of reducing America’s role in the region. So, after decades of American omnipotence in regional politics, perhaps the Middle East is entering into a new era of limited American involvement, with the regional players themselves dictating the terms of their own peace.

Grant Newman graduated from Harvard Law School where he was an executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. Grant was the recipient of the Federalist Society’s James Madison Award in 2019, and was active in the Alliance for Israel. Prior to law school, Grant graduated from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, with a degree in Business Strategy. He worked for several years at a major university in Moscow, Russia, and spent two years in Siberia dedicated to church service.

Israel's March Of Normalization. Two Ambassadors Speak

By Allan Marks

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Israel normalizing relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kosovo alters political dynamics in the Middle East, though not entirely as intended.

If the peace dove were to fly from Jerusalem roughly 2,000 kms she would land in either Abu Dhabi, UAE or Belgrade, Serbia.  That is the same distance as Istanbul to Tehran, Frankfurt to Moscow, or Boston to Miami.  With a flurry of new diplomatic announcements, the world feels like a smaller place of late.

In ceremonies at the White House in Washington, DC this month, documents were signed that resulted in the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and mutual diplomatic recognition between Israel and Kosovo.

As Israel, the UAE, Bahrain and the United States initialed the “Abraham Accords” on September 15, 2020, I interviewed two former ambassadors – one Israeli and one American – to discuss the implications of Israel’s march to normalization.  

Israeli Ambassador Arthur Koll and U.S. Ambassador Cameron Munter, who overlapped as diplomats in Serbia, took opposing positions in 2008 in response to Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia, consistent with their nation’s policies at the time.  The United States and most European countries quickly recognized Kosovo.  Israel, like other countries (including China, Cyprus, Spain and Russia) sided with Serbia in opposition to Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence.  

On September 4, 2020, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and Kosovo Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti signed separate letters with U.S President Donald Trump committing to limited economic normalization. Tacked on at the end of each letter, an incongruous short paragraph brings Israel into the Balkan dispute. In that clause, Serbia, long a close partner of Israel, commits to moving its embassy to Jerusalem while Kosovo agrees to mutual diplomatic ties with Israel and to opening an embassy in Jerusalem. Israel is not a party to the letters. Serbia’s president has since stated that formal Israeli recognition of Kosovo could severely damage bilateral relations. Israeli recognition of Kosovo also complicates Israeli-Palestinian relations, insofar as it runs counter to Israel’s stated opposition to unilateral declarations of sovereignty.

In contrast, the accords reached by Israel with the UAE and Bahrain, with US encouragement, constitute significant milestones in broadening the quiet alignment of interests between Israel and the two Gulf states. These are the first normalization treaties Israel has signed with an Arab state since the treaties of 1994 with Jordan and 1979 with Egypt. At a stroke, the new agreements make open economic and intelligence cooperation possible – mainly in opposition to Iran. This transparency comes at the expense of Palestinian nationalism, which for the UAE and Bahrain now takes a back seat to regional security and investment.

Assessing Israel’s normalization with Kosovo, the UAE and Bahrain, Ambassadors Koll and Munter offered insights about what these steps signify. These are some of the key takeaways from the retired diplomats’ discussion:

The Gulf Arab agreements highlight the limits of US power in the region.  Diplomacy is a long, grueling process of ironing out the details. The perception that the United States – withdrawing from Syria and Iraq and giving up on the Palestinians – lacks engagement has made the Gulf states turn to Israel against the twin regional threats of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. The United States, lacking any long-term, coherent strategic plan, is no longer seen as a “broker than can knock heads together” nor viewed as a neutral arbiter in resolving Middle East conflicts. The US administration shows little patience for the type of sustained diplomacy required to build durable relationships and confidence. Look for closer Israeli cooperation with traditional Arab states like Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, Oman and (less openly) Saudi Arabia to confront emboldened regional powers like Iran (and its proxies in Syria, Iraq and Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon) and Turkey (aligned in support of political Islam with Qatar and Hamas in Gaza).

Domestic politics, not any new diplomatic breakthrough, drove these announcements. It is unclear how the letters signed by Serbia and Kosovo help them, and they awkwardly create complications for Israel. The normalization letters appear to be driven by the US President’s desire to show some foreign policy successes before the November election, with provisions on Israel designed to build electoral support from right-wing Jews and pro-Israel evangelical Christians in the United States. Serbia and Kosovo recommitted to the European Union-facilitated Belgrade-Pristina Dialogue in a September 7 joint statement with EU High Representative Josep Borrell, stating that “they attach the highest priority to EU integration.”  Meanwhile, the EU reminded everyone that Jerusalem embassy pledges outside of an Israeli-Palestinian peace process run counter to EU policy. Politics in mind, Israel’s decision to suspend controversial Jordan Valley annexation efforts created an opportunity for the UAE to invite normalization, highlighted in a June 2020 op-ed by Yousef Al Otaiba, the UAE Ambassador to the United States, in Yedioth Ahronoth.  That gambit allowed the Israeli and US leaders to salvage a face-saving diplomatic “win” from a failed “peace” plan.  

The Palestinian situation could worsen. Two Gulf Arab states have established diplomatic ties with Israel without any preconditions for Palestinians other than Israel agreeing to suspend annexation of disputed territories (which was already on hold). The Palestinian Authority may have new incentive to seek creative dialogue with Israel. Alternatively, the Palestinians may remain divided and Netanyahu – never showing zeal for the Palestinian peace process – will continue to neglect them. Doing so could reactivate Palestinian resistance to the status quo and further set back resolution of the issues of sovereignty, security, and an equitable peace. Taking that course risks a repeat of 2000, when Israeli trade offices that had opened optimistically in Qatar and Morocco in the 1990s were shuttered in the wake of the Second Intifada and Israel faced isolation internationally and terrorism at home.  

Until Israeli-Palestinian relations are dealt with directly and comprehensively, Israel’s security and international relations remain fragile. These recent international agreements will further the goal of peace only if followed by sustained diplomatic efforts and a shared commitment to building trust on all sides.

Allan Marks is a partner at Milbank LLP and one of the world's leading project finance lawyers. Mr. Marks also serves as an Adjunct Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, where he teaches at both the Law School and the Haas School of Business. Mr. Marks speaks and publishes frequently on a range of topics, including finance, infrastructure investment, cross-border transactions, sustainability, and economic and regulatory policy. He is the host of the “Law, Policy & Markets: Milbank Conversations” podcast.

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Short-range air defense is making a comeback

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By SHachar Shohat

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Recent events in the Middle East have led some to wonder how countries, including Israel, can protect their own strategic installations. 

Israel's adversaries, such as Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, have threatened to strike sensitive Israeli targets. 

Saudi Arabia absorbed a painful strike in September 2019, an Iranian drone swarm combined with cruise missiles struck oil fields, causing heavy damage. 

The attack on Saudi Arabia is the latest tangible example of the evolving threat: precision guided, sophisticated enemy air attacks. 

Each country designates its own strategic sites for special defense. They range from nuclear power plants to air force bases, to Olympic stadiums, and the hardening of defenses around strategic sites was especially prominent until around three decades ago. 

At that time, attackers using close-range munitions had to approach a given site in order to attack it. Visual contact was often required and simple air to ground munitions would suffice for an attack. Defense systems of that time were similarly simplistic. 

Air force bases might be protected by a forty-millimeter anti-aircraft cannon, for example, in order to prevent a direct attack on a runway. That same concept would be applied to any sites deemed critical by a state. 

In addition to being limited in range, though, such defenses required many munitions and high numbers of personnel. 

The 1980s and ‘90s witnessed a revolution in the world of weaponry. 

Precision, long-range (standoff) munitions entered the battle arenas and close-range air defenses became largely obsolete. Once attackers no longer needed proximity to their targets, close range defenses could not hit either the longer-range munitions or their launchers.

But over the past decade, we have seen the addition of GPS-guidance systems to those munitions. advent, combined with the overall revolution of the 80’s and 90’s, has heightened the need for states to return to close-range air defenses – but in a new configuration.  

With the Iron Dome and the Drone Dome defense systems, Israel has pioneered that return, because it has had to do so.  

It is able to effectively defend against very short-range threats. Drone Dome, for example, can detect threats at a distance of 3.5 kilometers. 

Additional systems are now in the pipeline. 

Small, affordable interceptor missiles, and laser beam defenses the answers to the new categories of close-range threats seen around the world, including gliding bombs, cruise missiles, and drones. 

In 2019, the Iranians proved that if they have intelligence on their target and the ability to send munitions to the 'blind spot' of radars, attacks can be successful. 

That attack should serve as a "wake up call" for countries around the world. If states want to protect strategic sites, radars that look in every direction, 360 degrees, 24 hours a day, are needed.

Effective new defense systems must now be multi-directional in their detection of incoming threats, a response to the enemy’s ability to turn, steer and evade radar coverage and detection. That coverage must be combined with multiple layers of defense, including defense mechanisms very close to the asset being defended. 

Examples of what is now needed for strategic site defenses are already evident in the realm of military vehicles. 

The IDF installed the Trophy defense system on a growing number of tanks and armored personnel carriers, as a result of a series of incidents in Lebanon and Gaza. 

Airframes also need such systems, as the downing of an Israeli transport helicopter by Hezbollah in the Second Lebanon War demonstrated, as do ships - and so too do strategic assets.  

The age-old military axiom asserts that lines of defense will always be breached. As such, we must develop the maximum number of opportunities for interception possible.

Longer-range air defense systems, such as the Patriot, David's Sling, or S-400 can intercept threats at tens or hundreds of kilometers away, but today, because state enemies can bypass long range defenses, countries must always have the ability to directly intercept the actual munitions.

Without close defense capabilities forming part of a country’s multi-layer defense systems, strategic sites are simply not adequately protected.

In the context of multi-layer defense development and deployment around strategic sites and sensitive targets, Israel has taken on the role of global leader. 

In 2020, short range air defenses are making a comeback, and this time, they are set to remain as a permanent fixture.

Brigadier General Shohat concluded his service in the IDF as the Commander of the Israel Air Defense Forces. During that command position he oversaw the air defense component of Operation Protective Edge, 2014. Prior to that, he served as the Head of the IDF Reorganizational Efficiency Project from 2011-2012.

TRUMP'S BALKAN AGREEMENT DOES ISRAEL MORE HARM THAN GOOD

By Arthur Koll

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Kosovo and Serbia have a bloody and troubled history. As they attempt to reduce tensions and to create new economic agreements between them, Israel has been bizarrely dragged into this delicate Balkan mix. 

Since its unilateral declaration of independence in 2008, Kosovo, which has an Albanian ethnic majority, has been recognized by the U.S. and by most EU states, but not by the United Nations. Russia and China, would veto any such recognition by the UN Security Council. Kosovo is thus yet to be admitted to the UN as a fully-fledged member, despite the fact that over 100 states already recognize its independence. 

Even in the EU, some have refrained from recognizing Kosovo for the simple reason that they themselves have separatist movements that could be encouraged to unilaterally declare their own independence following the Kosovo precedent. 

Examples of such states include Spain, which contends with a Catalonian independence movement, and Cyprus, which has a separatist northern Turkish entity that is recognized only by Turkey. Slovakia and Romania also have their own minorities that could be encouraged by the Kosovo precedent, leading them to avoid granting recognition. 

Historically, Albanians and Jews have enjoyed positive relations, including Albanian assistance to Jews fleeing the Nazi death machine during the Second World War. 

In 1999, during the war in Kosovo, Israel sent significant aid to the refugees fleeing the war zone. We established field hospitals in neighboring Balkan states and accepted some of those fleeing Kosovo into Israel.

Since becoming independent, Kosovo has applied a fair degree of pressure on Israel to officially recognize it, due to the significance that it attaches to Israel's international status. 

From the outset, Israel informed Kosovo that while it has nothing against the Kosovan people, Israel must take its own interests into account. Israeli recognition of Kosovan independence would impact the Israeli – Palestinian conflict. 

Kosovo declared independence not through a negotiated agreement with Serbia; but unilaterally. That reality is too close to home for Israel given that the Palestinians are also seeking to achieve recognition from the international community on a unilateral basis, bypassing direct talks with Israel and any negotiated agreement. 

Israel’s options for granting recognition of Kosovo was therefore based on one of two developments coming to pass: either Kosovo and Serbia reach an agreement, or Israel and the Palestinians do. 

Recognizing Kosovo before one of those two things took place could serve to boost and a predicate for a Palestinian initiative to demand recognition from the UN for a unilaterally declared Palestinian state in the West Bank, with Jerusalem as its capital. 

Furthermore, the Palestinians would be reluctant to return to the negotiating table, believing instead that more could be gained by turning to the UN and the international community. 

Once explained to leaders in Kosovo, these concerns were greeted with some understanding. Efforts to change Israel's position continued, however. 

The biggest lever Kosovo had at its disposal to dislodge the Israeli policy was the U.S., but even that was insufficient to get Jerusalem to change its diplomatic principle. 

All of that suddenly changed on September 4, 2020, when U.S brokered economic agreements between Serbia and Kosovo were signed in Washington D.C. by President Donald Trump, Aleksandar Vucic, the President of Serbia and Avdullah Hoti, the Prime Minister of Kosovo. Those agreements are aimed at regulating the interaction between the large Serbian minority living in northern Kosovo and Serbia. The scope of those agreements includes the handling of interests, assets, and the movements of goods and people between Belgrade and Pristina.

Oddly, and in a manner that is out of place, one of the clauses of this economic agreement between the two Balkan rivals is that Israel recognizes Kosovo, and that both Kosovo and Serbia establish embassies in Israel's capital of Jerusalem. 

This diplomatic turn of events should be viewed with deep suspicion, for several reasons. 

Serbia, for its part, interprets an Israeli recognition of Kosovo as a significant diplomatic blow. It is therefore less than likely to reward such a development by moving its embassy to Jerusalem. Indeed, in recent days, Serbia has more than hinted that it will not move its embassy if Israel recognizes Kosovo. The chances of a Serbian embassy in Jerusalem by summer 2021, as the agreement calls for, look slim at best.

On the subject of Kosovo, Israel is departing from a long standing foreign-policy principle in return for a vague promise of a Kosovan embassy in Jerusalem. 

An EU statement further added to the skepticism. It warned both Serbia and Kosovo that moving their embassies to Jerusalem would undermine the Union's collective stance on the Israeli – Palestinian conflict, and that it would harm the prospects of both countries being accepted into the EU – a key objective of both Belgrade and Pristina. 

As such, Israel appears to have been dragged into a Balkan conflict against its own interests, and regardless of the manner in which this strange situation ends, Israel does not stand to benefit. 

Israel must now move swiftly to ensure that its ties with Serbia, which have been excellent to this point, are not harmed as a consequence of this process. 

Ultimately, one has to ask why Israel was ready to surrender a key policy principle in such an awkward and clumsy manner. 

The likely explanation is that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is returning a political favor to Donald Trump. 

Just as the American president has made multiple gestures of support to Netanyahu in the build up to successive Israeli elections, including moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, and recognizing Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights, so now has Netanyahu agreed to help Trump's campaign. 

Trump boasted a foreign policy 'success' and has scored points with his base through the announced agreement. 

As for whether either Serbia or Kosovo will move their embassies to Jerusalem - to say the least, that remains to be seen. 

In the meantime, a key Israeli policy interest may well have been sacrificed. 

Ambassador Arthur Koll is the former Deputy Director-General of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he concluded his service as the head of the Media and Public Affairs Division. He is a former Ambassador of Israel to the Republic of Serbia and Montenegro and served as instructor of the National Defense College. Mr. Koll also served as Consul of the Israeli Consulate in Atlanta, USA and as Director of Projects for the Central Europe & Eurasia Division.

Hamas: Masters Of Negotiations

BY Grisha Yakubovich

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Earlier this week, Hamas and Israel declared a long-term cease fire agreement.

Some view Hamas as a simple terrorist organization that limits its activities to digging tunnels, firing rockets, and preparing suicide bombings. In reality, Hamas has evolved into an organization with clear long-term goals, and a strategy to achieve them.

Others believe Hamas is a democratically elected political party that acts on the will of its people. In truth, it censors domestic criticism. Gazans opposed to Hamas’ authority face merciless retribution.

So, what is Hamas, and how have they become such sophisticated, formidable negotiators, able to force Israel to the negotiating table? Hamas rose to power in the Gaza Strip in June 2007, ousting the Palestinian Authority in a violent coup. Since then, it has fought three conflicts with Israel, and the socio-economic situation in Gaza has inched ever closer to collapse. Yet, Hamas’s rule is strengthening, and it governs the Strip with a firm hand, wielding unchallenged power.

Furthermore, after every major armed conflict with Israel, Hamas emerged seemingly victorious from post-ceasefire negotiations.

Their playbook is simple. First, they escalate hostilities. Second, they agree to a ceasefire on the condition that post-violence negotiations are mediated by Egypt. Third, they anchor their negotiating positions with unreasonably high demands. Last, they extract concessions from Israel to which Israelis would not have conceded during peacetime.

Hamas has studied the Israelis. Their demands yield increasing effectiveness. Hamas has learned Israel’s priorities, red-lines, and non-negotiables.

Hamas acts first to improve Gaza's humanitarian situation. Second, they seek to lift Israeli security restrictions on Gaza, which it describes as a blockade. Third, Hamas wants to dominate the international narrative. 

Lastly, Hamas is positioning to succeed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.

Hamas’ negotiation strategy is constantly evolving, while Israel’s approach to negotiations has remained stagnant. Israel continues to demand a cessation of rocket attacks, tunnel digging (including sea tunnels), the end of Hamas's naval commando threats to the Israeli coastline, border bombs, and recruiting for its military wing. Israel also demands the release of two civilians held captive by Hamas and the remains of two IDF soldiers who fell in Gaza in 2014. In return, Israel offers to solve some of Gaza's humanitarian challenges, both directly and through the assistance of third parties. 

For example, Israel proposed the construction of a natural gas pipeline into Gaza to power Gaza's electricity station. Though Egypt also has the capacity to build such a pipeline into Gaza, Israeli-Egyptian relations mean Egypt would not do this without coordination with Israel. Hamas understands this, and realizes that it would have to make concessions at the negotiating table for the pipeline to go forward.

So Hamas turns to primitive tools to coax Israel back to negotiations: incendiary and explosive balloons and kites, for example. The use of these simple tools comes after many months of disturbances on the Israel-Gaza border, and the deployment of 'night squads' along the fence that burn tires, release arson balloons, and aim to exhaust local Israeli civilians living in southern Israel. 

These attacks have garnered extensive coverage across Israeli media, and Israeli civilians are desperate for the carnage to end. In short, Hamas’ goal of manipulating Israel back into the negotiating room appears to be working.

Israel has responded with sophisticated air power. When juxtaposed against kites and balloons in the international press, Israeli fighter jets look like Goliath’s bronze spear staring down the Gazan David’s sling.

This past month exemplified this pattern. On August 7, incendiary Gazan balloons began being floated across the border, riding on sea winds that always blow east towards Israel. A week later, on August 15, an Egyptian mediation delegation arrived in Gaza.

To heap further pressure on Israeli negotiators, Hamas announced that its power station would cease operations, making it seem as though Israel was preventing Hamas from producing the energy it needs to power the Strip.  

Three days thereafter, Gaza City's Mayor raised an alarm about the effect of the power cuts on Gaza’s water supply. As a result, Hamas won the PR battle once again, somehow convincing the international community that Israel was responsible for the absence of potable water in Gaza.

Hamas carried out the escalation it had planned all along, step by step, as a military operation. The doctrine of Hamas is to 'keep the enemy busy,' by way of a low level war of attrition, using the most basic tools imaginable, and to reap real dividends during future negotiations. 

Hamas continues to rack up large victories in the PR arena, and small victories at the negotiating table. And so they will continue to push. Hamas will demand new projects, and further Israeli investment into Gaza's economy. It will not agree to demilitarize Gaza. Indeed, further demands will likely include a port, a symbolic airport, and access to the West Bank so that Hamas can participate in future Palestinian elections. 

This is a losing situation for Israel. Multiple deployments of the same Israeli strategy is not an effective way forward. It is no accident that such thinking was apocryphally described by Albert Einstein as “insanity.” Israel needs to reevaluate their negotiating strategy with Hamas. It is time for some creativity - something they could learn from their adversary.

Colonel Grisha Yakubovich serves as a policy and strategy consultant to various international NGO's. He concluded his military service in 2016 as the head of the civil department for the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (C.O.G.A.T.).