MAHMOUD ABBAS IS WAITING FOR A BIDEN ADMINISTRATION

By David Hacham

hacham-1024x683.jpg

The historic Abraham Accords have exposed the profoundly weakened position in which the Palestinian Authority now finds itself. 

Mahmoud Abbas is almost certainly hoping for the return of a U.S. Democratic Administration, one he believes will turn back the clock on several recent US policies regarding the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Barely any ties remain between Mahmoud Abbas and the Trump Administration. Relations are at their lowest point since the start of the Oslo peace process. 

Spawning that deterioration is a series of US decisions that constitute a major departure from long held American positions toward the Palestinians. 

Attempting to convey the PA’s ability to implement unified, decisive positions in the face of U.S. treatment it views as unfair; Abbas has abandoned any pretense of cordial relations with America and he has ramped up his condemnation of what he views as Trump's unbalanced positions and bias. His audiences are the Palestinian street, the Arab world, and to the international community. 

It’s worth recalling what led to this breakdown. 

Following his election, the American president delayed his response to Abbas’s request for a congratulatory phone call. That conversation, which took place some ten days after the request was made, was interpreted as a clear attempt by Trump to downgrade Abbas's status. 

The appointment of David Friedman as the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, in May 2017, was seen as a provocative and offensive maneuver. Friedman, who was on record as holding explicitly right-wing positions, including enthusiastic support for Israeli development in the West Bank, was viewed as highly problematic by the P.A.  

Later, in December of the same year, the Americans recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital; a declaration swiftly followed by the deed of officially opening a U.S. embassy there.

Also in 2017, the Trump Administration closed the PLO office in Washington D.C. in an attempt to force the Palestinians back to the negotiating table, and to punish them for - and to deter them from - submitting complaints against Israel at the Hague. 

The immediate Palestinian response was to submit a new complaint to the Hague, opposing Israel's decision to clear the village of Khan Al-Ahmar in the West Bank.

The January 2020 'Deal of the Century' was dismissed by Abbas as an unfair and hostile blueprint.  

The passage of the Taylor Force Act of March 2018, which halts funding to the PA while it continues to pay monthly stipends to convicted terrorists and the families of killed terrorists, further angered Abbas. In 2018 alone, the PA paid 360 million dollars to terrorists or their families – 7% of the P.A.’s budget. 

The US, which was the principal funder of UNRWA, paying $ 1.1 billion annually (a third of UNRWA’s yearly budget), also withdrew funding to the organization in 2018.  

These measures have ruptured both diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the Palestinians and the security-intelligence cooperation between the P.A., the U.S. and Israel. 

In October 2018, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the U.S. General Consulate would merge with the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, and that the U.S. would manage relations with the Palestinians through a Special Palestinian Affairs Unit. The P.A.’s policy has been to avoid any cooperation with the new unit.

That cooperation, led by the PA’s head of the General Intelligence Services, Maj. Gen. Majed Faraj, on the Palestinian side, was suspended by the PA in May 2020, in protest of Israeli plans to apply sovereignty in the Jordan Valley. 

Even the official contacts between the PA and the CIA, which had managed to weather the crisis, were suspended a number of weeks ago. 

Ultimately, the P.A.’s decision to cut off ties with a superpower like the U.S. was counterproductive. It only served to weaken the P.A.’s status in America’s eyes. 

The Palestinians have thus adopted a waiting position ahead of the US presidential elections this coming November. Their hope is that a Biden Administration will bring an end what the PA views as four nightmarish years for the Palestinian cause.

But when viewed for what they are; the withholding of funding for terrorist stipends, including terrorists who have murdered U.S. citizens, the opening of a U.S. embassy to Israel in the Israeli capital and the defunding of UNRWA; any future U.S. administration will be hard pressed to reverse course. Gambling that they will do so may prove to be a mistake. The P.A. would be better served by coming out of its defensive crouch and starting to progress toward reconciliation with Israel and America. 

David Hacham served for 30 years in IDF intelligence, is a former Commander of Coordination of Govt. Activities in the Territories (COGAT) and was advisor for Arab Affairs to seven Israeli Ministers of Defense.

QUESTIONING ABRAHAM

Sobchak.jpg

By Frank Sobchak

This week Sudan agreed to the normalization of relations with Israel in exchange for its removal from the list of state sponsors of terrorism; joining Bahrain, UAE, and a growing chorus of nations that have seemingly put an end to decades of Arab-Israeli conflict. The Trump and Netanyahu administrations have heralded these achievements as byproducts of their diplomatic efforts, and President Trump has been personally nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Despite these claims, such an assessment would be a poor interpretation of events. Although the Abraham Accords are encouraging and historically significant developments, they are more a byproduct of tectonic changes that have transformed the region over decades than the result of diplomatic work of the parties involved. Most responsible for the accords is the restructuring of the Middle East regional balance of power as well as massive domestic transformations across the Arab world. 

For three decades, the two Iraq wars and their aftershocks have restructured the power dynamic of the Middle East, producing what scholars term the phenomenon of balancing - when countries shift alliances to collectively meet the challenges of a rising power. States that have little in common and few incentives to form partnerships band together against what they perceive to be a common and larger foe. Here, the decline of Iraq and the rise of Iran have led countries across the region to reassess their regional and international partnerships. Such a change in circumstance did not occur overnight. America’s two wars with Iraq, Desert Storm in 1991 and Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, militarily emasculated Iraq, which had long been considered Iran's regional counterbalance. Iraq’s armed forces, which in 1990 was the fifth largest in the world now cannot even provide domestic security. 

The deterioration of Iraqi military strength increased Iran’s relative power and emboldened their behavior. Iranian surrogates operate in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq; all part of an aggressive regional strategy known as the axis of resistance. Iranian forces or their proxies have launched attacks on tankers in the Persian Gulf and oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, exacerbating the traditional Sunni-Shi’a schism and terrifying many of Iran’s neighbors whose militaries are dwarfed by the new regional hegemon. Iran’s active military is roughly three times Saudi Arabia’s and six times the size of UAE’s. Worse, the U.S., which has often played the role of regional policeman, has seemingly retreated into an era of limited overseas commitments and can’t be counted on to intervene against Iran- a policy consistent across the Obama and Trump administrations. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, viewed by many in the U.S. and Europe as a way to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, is perceived very differently by most Sunni Arab states. They see it as poorly designed and enforced; a destabilizing factor that could result in a nightmarish scenario. These factors have frightened Iran's neighbors into novel alliances with Israel which demonstrate the classical balancing verdict that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.  

Shifts in the regional balance of power, when added to the diminishing importance of the Palestinian cause among Arab populations, has resulted in new opportunities for Israel-Arab relations.  Twenty years ago, when Arabs were polled about their most important personal issue it was almost always "liberation" for the Palestinians. In Arabic, the word “Jerusalem” was seemingly inseparable from “occupied,” reflecting that the plight of the Palestinians mattered in daily life. Polls today do not reflect these concerns. A Palestinian state has dropped to the second most important foreign policy issue (behind Iran) for many Arab states and has often fallen behind economic issues and education in personal concerns. Majorities in many states now see normalization of relations with Israel as a positive development.

Fatigue with the Palestinian conflict, alongside a greater recognition of their own domestic problems makes many Arabs less inclined to follow the traditional Arab narrative on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The fracturing of the Palestinian position into two diametrically different camps in the West Bank and Gaza further accelerated this process. Frustration from the Arab Spring’s lack of progress towards political change refocused many domestic audiences towards their own problems rather than those of the Palestinians. And the brutality of the Syrian and Iraqi civil wars put the notion of suffering into painful context.  

Access to non state-run media sources have enabled Arabs across the region to bear witness to these problems like never before. Old orthodoxies are thus questioned. Tired narratives lack the support they once did. 

Some Syrians and Lebanese have posted videos stating they would rather be Arabs in Israel than in their own countries, and others have denounced Hezbollah as “worse than Israel.”  Even Saudi Arabia, once a stalwart defender of the Palestinians, has begun to criticize Palestinian positions. Put together, these changes have begotten opportunities for advances in relations and normalization; most tellingly manifested in the form of the Abraham accords.

Given the impacts of the shifts in the Middle East balance of power and Arab domestic political changes, it is more likely than not that subsequent normalizations between Israel and other Arab states will occur in the near future. 

But more important than the simple tally of new alliances is the question of how long lasting and deep rooted those new friendships prove themselves to be. Allegiances that have shifted can shift back. That reality raises questions.

If the interests that led to normalization abruptly change, how heightened will concerns over the controversial sale of advanced F-35s stealth fighters to UAE become? Those concerns remain, despite Israel's recent condoning of the sale. Will Sudan’s removal from the list of state sponsors result in a real change of behavior and policy? Time will tell, but before we celebrate in earnest, these questions are certainly worthy of answers.

Frank Sobchak is a PhD candidate in international relations at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and has taught at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Tufts University, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He holds a BS in Military History from West Point and a MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University. Read full bio here.

Hezbollah: A systematic violator of international law

By Eli Bar-On

Eli+Bar-On.jpg

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

JS headshot2.jpg

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

Rozman_Headshot.jpg

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

Grant+Newman.jpg

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

Marks-Allan-NYC-web.jpg

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.

,

Short-range air defense is making a comeback

,

By SHachar Shohat

Shachar+Shochat.jpg

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

koll-1024x683.jpg

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.