Category Archives: Middle East

Government, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States

Israel’s confrontation with Hamas in the West Bank must not be allowed to stoke fanaticism…

MIDDLE EAST

Israel has called-up 40,000 reservists in response to rocket attacks from Gaza and is the latest escalation in an increasingly dangerous confrontation in the Middle East. One may be of the opinion that Israel has shown commendable restraint by responding with targeted strikes against known Hamas missile bases and known operatives. But at least a dozen civilians have been reported dead in Gaza, which in turn has put localised pressure on Hamas to strike back, continuing and escalating the cycle of violence. Air raid sirens have been heard in and around Tel Aviv as Hamas have unleashed its long-range missiles.

A situation similar to that of 2008 – where a popular clamour for the Israeli Defence Force to enter Gaza – is evolving once again. Whilst hard for many Israelis to resist another military incursion, Benjamin Netanyahu and his government should hold back (if at all possible). Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ affords high level protection against the missiles and proved to be highly effective during a similar attack two years ago. Undoubtedly, the provocation being faced by Israelis is enormous: more than 100 rockets have been fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel, and it is hard to discern any country facing a similar scenario exercising self-discipline and restraint in such circumstances.

However, the flare-up with Hamas can no longer be seen solely within the depressingly familiar context of the long-running Arab-Israeli dispute. With events elsewhere in the region as they are – in Syria, Iraq, tensions on the Sinai Peninsula and, potentially, great scope for both Jordon and Lebanon to be sucked into a wider conflagration – any intensification between Hamas and Israel will give the region as a whole a far more dangerous geopolitical edge. The Islamists of ISIS in their newly declared caliphate along Iraq’s frontier with Jordon want the common enemy of Israel drawn into the wider conflict. What is more, too, is that Hamas’s political hold in Gaza is notably unsettled and precarious, which is why it formulated a pact with Fatah in the West Bank. One reason for Israel’s reluctance to mount a ground operation is that the collapse of Hamas would encourage the rise and emergence of yet more extreme jihadist groups (as has happened in Iraq). Israel’s ratcheting up of the pressure through coordinated air strikes and mass troop mobilisation is intended to force a weakened Hamas to stop the rocket attacks.

It that plan fails, and the IDF deploys into Gaza, events will be much harder to control. Such action would seem certain to ignite trouble in the West Bank, where tensions remain fraught following the murder of a Palestinian boy in an apparent tit-for-tat response to the killing of three Israeli school children. Here, again, the Israelis have acted properly by arresting the suspects and allowing the law to take due process.

Any government’s priority is, of course, the protection of its citizens. But if the government of Israel can achieve that without fomenting and instigating yet more jihadist fanaticism, then surely that must be to Israel’s long-term advantage. Because of its prosperity, military power and international status, Israel has more to lose by intensifying its campaign in Gaza than maybe immediately obvious to its citizens. Certainly, the powerful using brute strength on the weak is never an attractive sight, whatever the level of provocation.

The United States will be in a position to point this out, and it must use its influence to calm tensions in a region that otherwise might escalate into something that will be more difficult to contain. An abiding peace in the region is now as far away as it has ever been, but surely no Israeli will wish to live in a perpetual state of continual conflict.

Infogram:

Map depicting where the missiles are falling in Israel.

Map depicting where the missiles are falling in Israel.

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Britain, European Union, Iraq, Middle East, Politics, Society, United Nations, United States

Former diplomats lead calls for Tony Blair to be axed as Middle East Peace Envoy…

TONY BLAIR

Intro: An open letter led by ex-diplomats, and signed by thousands more, calls for the former British Prime Minister who went to war on a lie and based on a false prospectus to be axed as Middle East peace envoy

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THREE former UK ambassadors to the Middle East have joined a new demand and are campaigning for Tony Blair to be removed from his role as Middle East ‘peace’ envoy.

Signatories to an open letter, led by Mr Blair’s former ambassador to Iran Sir Richard Dalton, describes his achievements in the region as ‘negligible’, criticising his money-making activities and accuse him of trying to ‘absolve himself’ of responsibility for the crisis in Iraq.

Other former diplomats lending their weight to the letter are Sir Oliver Miles, Britain’s ambassador to Libya when relations were severed after the death of WPC Yvonne Fletcher, and Christopher Long, ambassador to Egypt between 1992 and 1995. Joining more than 4,000 signatories are human rights barrister Michael Mansfield QC, former London mayor Ken Livingstone and former Conservative prisons minister Crispin Blunt.

The letter has been organised by the makers of Respect MP George Galloway’s film The Killing of Tony Blair. It has been deliberately timed for this week’s seventh anniversary of Mr Blair’s appointment as envoy on the Middle East for the ‘quartet’ of the UN, the EU, Russia and the US, and is addressed to John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, and to the EU’s ‘foreign minister’.

It argues that Mr Blair’s 2003 invasion of Iraq is to blame for the rise of “fundamentalist terrorism in a land where none existed previously” and that he should be removed from his position.

The letter says: “We are appalled by Iraq’s descent into a sectarian conflict that threatens its existence as a nation, as well as the security of its neighbours. We are also dismayed at Tony Blair’s attempts to absolve himself of any responsibility for the current crisis by isolating it from the legacy of the Iraq war.”

It is alleged that Mr Blair ‘misled the British people’ by suggesting Saddam Hussein had links to Al-Qaeda. It adds: ‘It is a cruel irony for the people of Iraq that perhaps the invasion’s most enduring legacy has been the rise of fundamentalist terrorism in a land where none existed previously.

‘We believe Mr Blair, as a vociferous advocate of the invasion, must accept a degree of responsibility for its consequences.’

Criticising the former prime minister’s business interests, the letter alleges that his ‘conduct in his private pursuits also calls into question his suitability for the role’, and accuses him of ‘blurring the lines between his public position as envoy and his private roles at Tony Blair Associates and the investment bank JPMorgan Chase’.

The letter adds to growing calls for Mr Blair to stand down. In the last few days the former foreign secretary Lord Owen criticised Mr Blair for his claims that the 2003 invasion was not a factor in the current unrest in Iraq. “Tony Blair should no longer be allowed to speak for the EU on the Middle East, and someone else found for helping Palestine without his past record and crusading messianic fervour,” he said.

A spokesman for Mr Blair said: ‘These are all people viscerally opposed to Tony Blair with absolutely no credibility in relation to him whatsoever. Their attack is neither surprising nor newsworthy… They include the alliance of hard Right and hard Left views which he has thought against all his political life. Of course he completely disagrees with them over the Middle East.’

People are being urged to support the call for Mr Blair to be removed by signing the petition at www.change.org.

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Britain, Foreign Affairs, Iraq, Middle East, Politics, Society, Syria, United States

The dismal choices faced in Iraq: averting the worst scenario must be viewed as a priority…

IRAQ

Intro: Iraq is in a quagmire. The options are dismal, but the West cannot reverse the course of events in Iraq by intervening

The West will take some comfort, as well as to most Iraqis that Iraq’s ramshackle armed forces appear to have stalled the advances towards the capital by Sunni jihadists. The fall of Baghdad to the fighters of ISIS would undoubtedly lead to the termination and dissolution of Iraq as a formal state, as well as providing the jihadists and their putative caliphate with a real capital – forcing millions of Iraqi Shia to flee from their homes. It is inconceivable to believe or imagine the Middle East absorbing the shock.

Such an apocalypse has been averted, for now at least, and the Middle East and the wider world will gasp deep breaths of relief. However, even if the makeshift Iraqi forces succeed in containing the ISIS fighters (some 60 miles north of Baghdad) the long term prognosis for the country and for the region remains desperately worrying.

ISIS is in control of much of north and north-west Iraq. Whilst the insurgents may possibly cede the odd frontline town back to Iraqi forces, it will still be in possession of a de facto state composed of large, continuous chunks of Iraq and Syria. The boundaries that the British and French imposed on the Middle East following the end of the First World War seem soon to vanish, with the dismal fate that both will become failed states, much in the same way that Somalia became on the Horn of Africa. The emergence of such vacuums on the map of the world will be hugely destabilising – drawing in and expelling a range of volatile forces and consequences that will be very difficult to deal with.

The frontiers of Iraq and Syria were drawn arbitrarily to reflect the temporary interests of British and French colonists. It is quite possible, of course, with events unfolding as they are that both countries were only ever going to be viable under despotic rulers, in which case nothing can be done to prevent them from dissolving in the long term, or stop their embittered and hopelessly alienated Sunnis from creating their own entity out of the debris.

One major and worrying problem is that these countries are unravelling in a completely uncontrolled fashion. Another concern is that the heavily armed insurgents of ISIS have no intention of confining themselves to a medium-sized state based in north-west Iraq and the north-eastern parts of Syria. These extremists are religious imperialists, and their hardened and fierce ideology teaches them that they must expand or die. They will soon turn elsewhere if they are forced to consolidate control over their existing territories. The ethnically and politically fractured kingdom of Jordon surfaces as an obvious candidate for their malevolent attention.

The West, starting with the United States, cannot even hope to reverse the course of events in Iraq by intervening on the ground. President Barack Obama was right to rule out any ground incursion by US troops going back into the country.

That doesn’t mean, however, that the US takes up an observer’s seat as the region descends into ever greater chaos and disorder. Washington should encourage the tentative rapprochement between Saudi Arabia (Sunni) and Iran (Shia), both of which are starting to see just how dangerous the Sunni-Shia power struggle is becoming to each of them. The sectarian divisions and widening conflagration could easily have a tendency to draw in others by default if no attempt is made to harness relations between other countries in the region.

Western countries could also afford to be more generous in helping to address the humanitarian aspects of the latest crisis. The UK, for example, has offered an additional £3m to help tens of thousands of fleeing refugees that have been displaced as a direct result of the advances made by ISIS. Most of these refugees are now camping in Kurdish-controlled areas of northern Iraq. Such a meagre sum, given the plight of many desperate people, is hardly an adequate gesture.

A fortuitous outlook might suggest that the Sunnis in Syria and Iraq turn against their self-styled deliverers at some future point. If that is the hope, then it is vital that the Shia-dominated regime in Baghdad is persuaded to keep the door open to talks about some kind of federal option for the Sunnis, and for the Kurds. True, it may be late in the day for Iraq to even try the federalist option, but just possibly that might be the only option remaining in salvaging some kind of gossamer-thin state from the current mess. The options available are far and few between, none of which look particularly good. Despair cannot be allowed to prevail and is not the answer.

 

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