Category Archives: Israel

Mischief in Gaza

15 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by in Israel, Middle East

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It has been a bus couple of weeks in the world: the two Koreas are finally talking peace, the United States hopes to talk Pyongyang into at least curtailing if not abandoning its nuclear programme, US president Donald Trump has abandoned the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action his predecessor signed with Iran to bring its nuclear programme under greater international scrutiny, the US embassy in Israel shifted from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and elections were held in the Indian state of Karnataka that many see as make-or-break for the Congress party before the general elections next year. In the midst of this, Gaza has been on the boil as thousands of Palestinians have attempted to charge the border fence into Israel and the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have, predictably, responded with strength.

The Gaza protests, dubbed the Great March of Return by Hamas, started on March 30 and are supposed to last until May 15, the day Palestinians commemorate as Nakba (catastrophe) Day. The purpose is manifold – to demand that Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to their lands in Israel, to protest the moving of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and to draw attention to the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. Palestinians participating in the protests have varied in number from around 5,000 to 15,000 except on the first day which saw a turnout of 30,000.

Approximately 110 Palestinians have died so far in the protests. On May 14 alone, the 70th anniversary of the proclamation of the State of Israel, 58 Palestinians were killed and approximately 2,700 injured at the border fence in what many are calling a massacre. While the world paints the protests as peaceful and accuses Israel of using disproportionate force, the IDF maintains that the Palestinian demonstrations have been anything but peaceful and are a cynical and bloody ploy by Hamas to gain international sympathy and headlines by paying in Palestinian corpses. Interestingly, the loud international outcry has been drowned out in the muted response from Arab capitals.

The international version of the Gaza protests does not add up. For starters, the Palestinian protesters have been photographed in possession of Molotov cocktails and machetes, flying swastika flags – which can have only one meaning to a Jew – and been arrested trying to breach the border fence into Israel. This has been accompanied by the usual stone pelting and colourful calls to slaughter all Jews and wipe out all Zionists. In the early days of the demonstrations, Palestinians set fire to large mounds of tires in the hope that the smoke would damage Israeli agriculture; a sudden change in the direction of the wind foiled that plot. Undeterred, kites were used to carry tear gas and bombs into Israel to set crops on fire. These attempts have been slightly more successful but also largely failed thanks to an alert citizenry and the emergency services.

There is also the question of what the intentions of this unruly, violent mob were had they succeeded in crossing over into Israel. The locus of the protests was barely 500 metres away from the border fence but protesters attempted to approach the fence at several locations. Is it plausible that the mob, with inflamed passions, calmly turn around and head back to Gaza? The tactics of the crowds suggest otherwise. The IDF was, then, acting in a purely preventive manner.

The claim of peaceful gathering does not hold for yet another reason – nowhere in the world would security services allow such a large gathering of clearly incited people to accumulate so close to a high security zone. Areas such as borders, nuclear facilities, military bases, and the prime ministerial residence are not the same as roads and parks which are open to the common public. Any suspicious activity, let alone mass gatherings, near such restricted areas are viewed as a security threat and dealt with accordingly. Hamas’ call for Gazans to gather at the border must therefore be seen as at least provocative if not outright aggressive in its nature in the challenge it posed to Israeli security.

It is also telling that Kerem Shalom, the only crossing for goods from Israel to Gaza, was attacked. In three separate attacks, mobs torched the border crossing and damaged depots containing building material destined for Gaza and fuel infrastructure. This would only worsen the electricity shortage in Gaza and slow international aid coming into the Strip. Hamas has also refused to accept Israeli humanitarian aid for the Palestinians injured in the clashes, reiterating their noxious brand of politics: the Gaza circus would only get international attention if there are enough casualties to merit a place in Western newspaper columns.

Finally, there is the old argument that Israel uses disproportionate force against terrorists. This is not the first time that accusation has been made but it is as unjustified as it has been in the past. The nature of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is fundamentally asymmetric – Palestinian terror organisations by design operate around non-combatant zones like civilian population centres, schools, and hospitals; they ensure the presence of women, children, the handicapped, and old people to manipulate the sympathies of the international audience in case of an Israeli strike against their bases; they do not wear uniforms and their targets are civilian structures rather than military assets. It is virtually impossible to strictly follow the rules of engagement reserved for inter-state conflict in such a scenario. The best that can be hoped for is the minimisation of collateral damage, civilians who have been put at risk by the terrorists’ strategy than by Israeli counter-attacks.

Moreover, deterrence contains an element of psychological warfare, of fear, and relies on disproportionate damage. If Israel is proportionate in its counter-terrorism strategy, it loses its advantage of power in the asymmetric struggle while the terrorists retain theirs. Furthermore, as a democratic country – that happens to be under demographic pressure – Israel cannot the tolerate casualties as casually as Hamas. Expectations also contribute to this – Hamas’ sympathisers do not expect it to be able to inflict equal damage upon Israel while the Israeli mainstream opinion remains in favour of punitive action to demoralise and humiliate the enemy.

Responsibility for the loss of life in Gaza over the past six weeks lies entirely at the feet of Hamas. It cannot be reasonably expected that the IDF sit back and allow tens of thousands of demonstrators to approach the border and breach the security fence, attack farms, crossing points, infrastructure, and Israelis. Anyone saying otherwise is either naïve or performing for a select audience.

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Reclaiming David’s Kingdom

02 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by in Israel, Middle East

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לְזַרְעֲךָ֗ נָתַ֙תִּי֙ אֶת־הָאָ֣רֶץ הַזֹּ֔את מִנְּהַ֣ר מִצְרַ֔יִם עַד־הַנָּהָ֥ר הַגָּדֹ֖ל נְהַר־פְּרָֽת׃ – בְּרֵאשִׁית‬‬ 15:18
To your descendants have I given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates – Bereshit 15:18

In its last major act of 2017, the Likud’s Central Committee voted unanimously to propose a resolution in the Knesset that would extend Israeli civilian jurisdiction to all Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, or what is also known as the West Bank. The vote comes barely three weeks after US president Donald Trump declared that the United States recognises Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and would be soon moving its embassy to the city from its present location in Tel Aviv. Trump’s declaration caused a minor crisis in the United Nations with the overwhelming majority of the world’s nation-states condemning the US decision.

Although many see the Central Committee’s decision as a ripple effect of Trump’s Jerusalem declaration, the item had been tabled for discussion in May but was delayed by seven months. Neither is the desire to annex the West Bank new – the sentiment goes back to at least 1967 and several of Israel’s first generation had been opposed to the partition plan in November 1947 that created yet another Arab state in the British Palestinian mandate.

It would be wrong, however, to see the Central Committee’s vote in purely ideological terms. In an interesting recent study of the motives behind settlements, several scholars have argued that the majority of settlers do not share the ideology of the Gush Emunim or its descendants. Rather, they are preoccupied with quotidian socioeconomic concerns such as affordable housing, office commute, and a lower cost of living. This is not to deny the ideological attraction to the entirety of the land among certain segments of Israeli society.

There are also mundane, logistical issues that an extension of Israeli sovereignty over all settlements will solve. Judea and Samaria, or YOSH as their Hebrew acronym goes, is presently run by a military administration that has the jurisdiction of all territory that Israel has not officially claimed. No matter how well-intentioned such a bureaucracy is, it is simply not trained to handle the complexities of civilian demands and the duty is an unnecessary burden on the military. Furthermore, it is odious to democracies that the military rule over civilians. Handing over the settlements to the civilian authority makes much more sense.

The common counter-argument to extending Israeli sovereignty over the settlements in YOSH – it should be remembered that this is just a proposal by the Likud’s Central Committee to its members in the Knesset to introduce a resolution to the effect and that such a resolution must pass to become law – is that it violates Art. 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which Israel ratified in 1951. Yet there are several legal complications involved in applying the said piece of international law to the territory in question. The first is if the West Bank can even be considered occupied territory for the question immediately arises, occupied from whom? The San Remo Resolution (1920) and the Mandate for Palestine (1922) both saw YOSH, Gaza, and East Jerusalem as part of a Jewish state. Israeli control over the territory, however, came only after the Six-Day War in June 1967 when YOSH was taken from Jordan – which had itself annexed it in April 1950. Even before the Jordanian annexation, the Arabs had rejected UN Resolution 181 that proposed a separate Jewish state and yet another Arab state in the British mandatory territory of Palestine; an independent country called Palestine has never existed in all of history even for a day. Whether the Geneva Conventions govern relations between state parties and non-state entities is a legal debate of its own.

Although the international consensus is that Art 49 does apply to Jewish settlements, Morris Abram, part of the US team at the Nuremburg Trials and later one of the drafters of the Fourth Geneva Convention, clarified in 1990 that the Article “was not designed to cover situations like Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, but rather the forcible transfer, deportation or resettlement of large numbers of people.” This is because the language speaks in terms of government coercion to transfer people which is not the case in YOSH. Jewish settlements have mostly occurred on open land rather than in urban settings and Israeli law clearly states that privately held land may not be confiscated.

It is by virtue of negotiations with Israel that any recognition of Palestinian political rights come into existence. The series of talks, agreements, and memoranda between Israel and its interlocutors have created an entire unique and particular framework – a lex specialis – by which the question of settlements must be adjudicated.

What is interesting about the Central Committee vote is that Benjamin Netanyahu was not present for it; the Israeli prime minister has in the past voiced his support for a separate Palestinian state although his critics point out that Netanyahu has in fact taken steps in the other direction. At a time when his tenure is being rocked by a corruption investigation, allowing such a resolution to pass might win him easy support with the Right.

In concert with the law the Knesset just passed that has made the ceding of any part of Jerusalem to the Palestinians in an eventual peace settlement more difficult by raising the number of votes required to pass such a bill from a simple majority to an absolute majority, critics are fuming that the Likud Central Committee’s resolution is clear proof that the Israeli Right was never interested in a just peace and Trump’s declaration emboldened them to make an overt land grab that had so far at least had the decency to be conducted on the sly.

Beyond the cynicism, however, there could be a strategic reason behind the demand to annex Jewish settlements in the West Bank. As Trump did three weeks ago with his Jerusalem declaration, the Likud has raised the price of delaying genuine peace talks for the Palestinians. Moderate Israelis to this day smart at the failure of Camp David Summit in July 2000 when Yasser Arafat was offered almost everything he could hope for and yet walked away from the table. The tortuous negotiating process during Oslo that ultimately had little effect in curbing terrorism has also soured many on peace. The Likud’s proposal is not yet law but allowing it to pass might be a signal by Netanyahu to the Palestinians that Israel is still holding some cards and the Palestinians do have more to lose.

Turning the screws on the Palestinians may not yield any results but then, nothing else has either. Israel has no room to manoeuvre with a foe that still declares in its charter that the Jewish state has no right to exist and calls for its destruction. Until Jerusalem has a partner for peace in the Arabs – as Egypt and then Jordan have demonstrated – the guns will not fall silent in the Holy Land. Between Trump and the Likud’s new playbook, it is just possible that they shake loose the peace process from its ossified status quo.

India’s Jerusalem Misstep

22 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by in India, Israel, Middle East, Opinion and Response, South Asia

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In keeping with its historical tilt towards the Arabs, India voted in favour of the United Nations resolution that called on the United States to reverse its decision recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and consequently refrain from transferring its embassy from Tel Aviv to the city. Besides India, 127 countries voted in favour of the resolution, including the four permanent members of the UN Security Council, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran; 35 countries, including Canada and Mexico, abstained, and 21 countries were absent during the vote. Only seven countries stood by Israel and the United States to vote against the resolution. Just three days earlier, the Security Council had voted 14-1 against the US decision.

These resolutions are non-binding and meaningless in compelling the United States to accept international opinion. However, the voting indicates just how internationally isolated the Donald Trump administration has become over the US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The landslide result came even as the United States had earlier threatened to curtail foreign aid to the countries that voted in favour of the resolution. Tellingly, the United States was abandoned by its staunchest long-term allies during the vote in the Security Council as well as the General Assembly. Even among the 28 NATO countries, no one voted with the United States and six abstained.

It is worth reiterating as many analysts not given to histrionics and I have in earlier articles that the US declaration is neither illegal nor does it change anything on the ground. First, the United States has left it to the Israelis and Palestinians to decide upon the boundaries of Jerusalem themselves, and second, the US embassy is being shifted to a neighbourhood in western Jerusalem – a portion of the city that has been the capital of Israel since December 13, 1949. It is only the status of East Jerusalem that is in dispute, but hypocritically only after 1967 when it came under Israeli possession and not 1948 when it was occupied by Jordan and Jews denied access to their holy sites.

This is not the place to get into the wrongs of India’s policy towards international Jewry in the 20th century before 1948 and Israel since. In any case, Delhi’s relations with Jerusalem have seen a sharp uptick since Narendra Modi took office in 2014 and India has been less reticent about its relations with Israel. Political rhetoric has been effusive about the “natural partnership” between the two states and highlighted cooperation particularly in critical areas such as defence, counter-terrorism, water management, and agriculture. India’s decision to vote with the UN resolution despite this bonhomie, though not surprising, is nevertheless unfortunate.

India had taken a noncommittal stance last fortnight when Trump first announced that the United States would recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The Ministry of External Affairs released a statement that Indian interests and policy would not be dictated by third parties. This position was reiterated a week later by India’s Minister of State for External Affairs, MJ Akbar, to the Arab League. It seems that Delhi finally buckled under the tremendous pressure from the Arab world to change its vote back to its traditional pattern.

It is not that India had no other options. Even if it did not wish to overtly side with Israel, it could have stayed true to its earlier stated position by abstaining from the vote or, better still, being absent for it. As Josef Broz Tito told Jawaharlal Nehru on the sidelines of the first Non-Aligned Movement summit in Belgrade in 1961, it is not necessary to take a position on every single issue that comes up. India’s warm words for Israel and its embassy in Tel Aviv would have allowed Delhi to straddle this divide masterfully but it was not to be.

One might argue that India’s vote is meaningless in terms of the global picture as well as in its bilateral relations with the United States and Israel. This is wishful thinking. While it is certainly true that India’s vote is meaningless in the broad scheme of things, it is more an indication of its weak diplomatic heft supported by a minor economy and even smaller military capability. To top it off, Delhi has no history of leadership in the Middle East. To conclude from this that India’s vote will not be noticed by Washington or Jerusalem, however, is folly.

The vote in a non-binding resolution may in and of itself be trivial but it fits a long and well-established pattern of voting against the United States and Israel. Yet another such vote indicates to both capitals that Delhi has not yet transformed into the rising world power they had hoped to see. India’s misstep at the United Nations might not attract an immediate and specific response but it will cool enthusiasm for greater trust and trade in sensitive technology and practices. Delhi’s signal that it remains the unreliable hedging power is no way to win friends and influence strategic partners, especially when India needs their help to fuel its economy and and military capabilities. India’s vote was important as that of a rising power but if, like China, it does not contribute to the existing world order, there is no reason for present powers to commit to its rise either.

It is ironic that India would like US and Israeli support on Kashmir but is not willing to even remain out of the fray – at no cost to it – on an equally emotive issue for them. Delhi seems to be sorely lacking in its understanding of diplomatic give-and-take, be it on the Indo-US civil nuclear cooperation agreement, trade agreements, joint military operations, or diplomatic undertakings. As the intractable hedge, Delhi reduces its own ability to influence states and leverage its assets for strategic gains.

This may be partly due to hubris among India’s leaders that their market is so large and increasingly prosperous that it is indispensable to salivating Western capitalists. The nuclear energy sector was a rude shock to such claptrap as company after Western company stayed away from the Indian market until the government finally stepped in to sufficiently assuage their concerns about India’s unconventional laws. Similarly, any sense of over-confidence India may have in its inherent worth would do well to get a reality check.

The usual argument trotted out to urge caution and status quo in India’s Middle East policy is that there are close to eight million Indians working in the Persian Gulf and they remit close to $35 billion annually to India. Yet if Delhi allows this to remain its primary criterion in deciding Middle East policy, it has effectively given the Gulf Cooperation Council a veto on its decision-making process. Additionally, these remittances are based on the Gulf economies and are hardly some sort of annual stipend for India. Delicate economic ties will not be snapped as easily as some analysts warn because the Gulf states also need an agreeable workforce; as a large customer, a minor diversification by India of its hydrocarbon acquisition can affect Gulf ledgers and is effective counter leverage.

There is no doubt that Washington’s threat that “it will take names” came across as crass and may have had an effect opposite to the one desired on many countries. With dwindling US aid and other financing options opening up, Trump was caught up in his own mini-1945 European Recovery Programme (ERP) time warp. For India, however, the threat need not have applied – its interests genuinely align significantly with those of Israel and the United States and there was no reason to stick a nay vote in their craw. The MEA’s failure to understand how international alliances work – however fluid and transient – is becoming one of India’s greatest liabilities.