Israel
The upsurge in violence in Israel is no surprise. It is a direct result of the government’s swing to the far-right. In fact Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu is, relatively speaking, now one of the more liberal members of his cabinet.
The Prime Minister’s time, however, is increasingly occupied by court appearances in an effort to fight charges of corruption, bribery and fraud. He also has to deal with the ongoing demonstrations against government plans to curb the independence of the Israeli judiciary.
The daily business of fighting Palestinian terrorism is dominated by ultra-orthodox politicians. These include several West Bank settlers who totally reject the concept of the two-state solution; demand the removal of all Palestinian settlements and, in one instance, have connections with right-wing terrorist organisations.
The latest round of violence started in the West Bank Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin. Like most such sites it is plagued with poverty, high unemployment and poor services. In short, an incubator for Palestinian terrorist groups.
The current round of violence started just over two weeks ago when an Israeli military jeep was blown up. As usual, the military responded and a 15-year-old Palestinian girl died. The cycle of violence continued and after two weeks the death toll had reached 12 Palestinians. But perhaps more importantly, the Israelis resorted to deadly air strikes for the first time in 20 years.
As of this writing Jenin is quiet. But violence has broken out in the West Bank Palestinian camp at Nablus where two people have died.
The Israeli army is reported to have been eager to withdraw as quickly as possible from Jenin and Nablus. They do not believe that a military solution is possible. The politicians disagree.
Leading the anti-Palestinian charge within the cabinet is National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. He is an illegal West Bank settler who wants to completely dismantle the West Bank Palestinian authority. He is a former member of Kahane Chai, a right-wing Jewish terrorist organisation which is banned in Israel and the US. In 2007 Ben Gvir was found guilty of incitement against Palestinians and terrorism.
Aryeh Dei, another West Bank settler and the Health Minister was actually sent to prison for three years for bribery. The Supreme Court has tried to block his appointment to the cabinet which led to the current battles between the court and the government.
Aryeh Dari, Interior Minister; Yoav Galant, Defense Minister; and Bezalel Smotrich, Finance Minister, are all illegal West Bank settlers.
The two-state solution: a Palestinian state and an Israeli state living side by side, remains the preferred resolution of the Biden Administration, the UK and EU. According to International law, the 600,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank are there illegally. But there has been no real effort to pursue the two-state option since 2014 and the Trump Administration more or less rejected it.
This has encouraged the ultra-Orthodox parties who are now in coalition with Likud to press for the dismantlement of the refugee camps and the Palestinian Authority and open the area to Jewish settlement only. The result can only be more violence.
France
France has a history of riots. The French Revolution, the 1848 revolution which ended Bourbon rule, the 1871 Paris Commune which followed the reign of Napoleon III and the 1968 student riots which brought about the downfall of Charles deGaulle are some of the better-known examples.
In more recent times there were the yellow vest demonstrations against fuel taxes and the protests about raising the pension age. But the most recent riots are on a different scale then these two.
They started when a 17-year-old ethnic Moroccan-Algerian boy named Nahel Merzouk was stopped and shot by police at a traffic light in the Parish suburb of Nanterre. The “Justice for Nahel” riots spread throughout France. At the last count 5,000 cars had been burned, 1,000 buildings and 250 police stations were attacked and damaged and 170 police were injured.
There are several reasons for the riots. One is a basic approach to policing in France. In Britain and the US the police are seen as servants of the public. In France and most other continental countries, they are viewed as controlling the public.
It is in this context that in 2017, a law was passed giving police the right to shoot any car driver who failed to stop when challenged. The law was quickly challenged by the UN Human Rights Council. In the past 18 months, 17 people have been shot under the terms of this law. They are overwhelmingly ethnic Black Africans or of Arab origin.
Most of them also live in what are called the Banlieues such as Nanterre. These are poverty stricken suburbs which encircle the wealthy city centres of France. The average unemployment rate in many of the Banlieues is 70 percent compared to seven percent for the rest of France. Drug use and crime are rampant. Public services are poor. No-go areas are common. The residents feel forgotten and angry.
Roughly twenty percent of France’s population is from an ethnic minority—one of the highest proportions in Europe. This high percentage of Arabs and Black Africans has created resentment from both the ethnic people and large sections of the White indigenous French community.
The last time there were similar race-based riots was in 2005. At that time France was dominated by centre-right and centre-left political parties. Almost all the politicians called for calm and the three weeks of demonstrations were largely confined to the suburbs.
Now there is a three-way split between the far left, the centre and the far-right, with each section taking a different stand on the riots. The revived far-left is led by Jean-Luc Melenchon. He said: “I don’t call for calm. I call for jusrtice.” Eric Zemmour, France’s far-right firebrand, declared: “We are at war with foreign enclaves in our midst.” President Emmanuel Macron appears isolated in his appeals for peace and an end to the violence.
The competing political cacophony is driving a political wedge through French political society and making it more likely that France will move to the populist left or right. This would undoubtedly have a major effect on the rest of Europe as France is a political leader on the continent.
Persian Gulf
53,000 oil tankers pass through the Persian Gulf each year. They carry roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and a third of its liquefied natural gas.
This week the Iranians attempted to seize two of the tankers. They were stopped from doing so by the destroyer the USS McFaul, part of the American Fifth fleet which patrols the Persian Gulf, Red Sea and Arabian Sea and is led by two aircraft carriers.
In total the Americans have about 36,500 troops deployed in the region under what is called the Central Command. The French, Italians, British, Dutch and Australians are also represented. But they act mainly as a support for the overwhelming American presence. Washington has tried to persuade the Germans to join the multinational protection force, but so far no luck.
The protection force is needed because the Persian Gulf is the world’s most dangerous as well as the most traversed and economically important waterway in the world. There have been numerous attempts by Al Qaeeda and ISIS to disrupt shipping, but the biggest villain is Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
They regularly send out fast patrol boats to harass or attempt to seize oil tankers, usually in the Straits of Hormuz. They share the 24-mile chokepoint entrance to the Gulf with pro-Western Oman. The narrow gap makes it easier for their patrol boats to dash out and claim that the vessels are encroaching on their territorial waters and seize them.
Iranian harassment has increased since the start of the Ukraine War. The Tehran government makes no secret of its support for Russia and harassing oil tankers is one way of underscoring it. Russia depends heavily on oil revenues to finance its war and prices are set by world supply and demand. Iranian threats to US oil tankers pushes up insurance premiums. They recently increased by up to $500,000 per tanker voyage. Increased insurance means higher prices at the pump and more money for Putin.
At a meeting this week in India of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (members include India, Pakistan, the Central Asian countries, Russia, Iran and China) Russia, Iran and China pushed for greater “security cooperation.” This was obviously diplomatese for increased support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It was ignored by the other members.
* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and author of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain".
Follow @LibDemVoice on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Tracing the route of Butterley Tunnel on the Cromford Canal
Number 12: The Innocence Mission - Black Sheep Wall
Lib Dems see off Reform in Barnsley with double their vote
Cleanliness at Harris Academy swimming pool #dundeewestend
Welsh councils still facing financical difficulties
Joe Bourke
Mohammed Amin
Jonathan Brown
theakes
32 Comments
“The two-state solution: a Palestinian state and an Israeli state living side by side, remains the preferred resolution of the Biden Administration, the UK and EU”
There is no two state solution – there are no peace talks ..There’s one state brutalising a section of the population – stealing their land & bulldozing their houses . The palastinian people are being ethnically cleansed with hardly a whimper of condemnation from the west …The slaughter in 2014 went absolutely unpunished, nearly 500 children died in that onslaught & if we think that Putin should be tried for war crimes – then so should the Israeli government …
Israel states that it’s targeting palastinian terrorists – one must ask – what exactly do you expect …
“The upsurge in violence is .. the direct result of the government’s swing to the far right.” There is much to agree with in Tom’s article, but he has got that wrong.
The reason the Palestinians have resorted to actions the Israelis describe as terrorism (and which the attack on Jenin was supposed to quell, although it will have the opposite effect) is that they have been abandoned by the international community. Israel has been in breach of international law and its obligations under Geneva Conventions ever since the 1967 war, but has been met with only feeble expressions of disapproval by, among others, successive US and UK governments, which have effectively given the green light to increasingly right-wing regimes in Israel.
The Palestinians have actually shown enormous patience while they have been waiting (for 55 years) for measures which would halt – and reverse – the Israeli colonisation of their country. Instead, we have a bill going through the British parliament which would criminalise those wanting to make Israel suffer a financial penalty for its illegal actions.
“In Britain and the US the police are seen as servants of the public.”
really? After the BLM demonstrations and the police repression of the miner’s strike in the UK to pick two random examples, I would suggest that the police are servants of the powerful elites, not the public.
For those supportive of a two-state solution, the idea that Benjamin Netanyahu is center-right and, relatively speaking, face of liberalism when compared to what rest of the government is like is a troubling prospect. It is of course a more tragic and complex situation than can be commented on sufficiently within the word limit.
The far right and the religious fanatics are visiting disaster on both communities, something Israel could have avoided if it had stayed within the 1967 borders and not sought to annex Palestine. Although we’ve reached the point where painful sanctions are needed to haul Israel back from the brink, it would have been better if Israeli voters had realised their future lay in peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians, and not the supremacist dreams of politicians like Ben Gvir and Smotritch.
I have a great deal of sympathy with all those who bemoan the course of Israel’s history and the lost opportunities along the way. We should learn from the mistakes of the past, but we can only deal with the situation that exists today. It is pointless to construct policies based on what might have been.
I have a lot of respect for Tom’s views, but the Palestinian people are not defeated, and neither should we be. People like Michael Gove, with his ludicrous ‘BDS Bill’, and his desire to be Netanyahu’s poodle, are here today, gone tomorrow politicians (next year, in the case of Conservative ministers like him).
Sanctions can be a powerful tool, and although they don’t always work, Israel is not Iraq. It needs the consent of western democracies for its brutal domination of Palestine, and that can be removed. This is not about trying to undo the past, it’s about shaping the future, something we not only can do, but given our past promises to the Palestinians, we have to do if we want to have any respect as a nation.
The reason that there has not been and never will be a two-state solution is that the Palestinians don’t want it. They rejected the Zionist project from the get-go 100 years ago. They rejected partition proposed by the Peel Commission in 1937 and by the UN in 1948. They in effected rejected the Oslo Accords by their insistence then, as now, on the ‘right of return’, which is the rhetoric of delegitimisation. It’s interesting that Andy Daer refers to the Palestinians not being defeated. That’s exactly right. The Palestinian leadership regard themselves as in an eternal feud with the Zionists. There will never be peace because the Palestinian leadership have never wanted it and never will. A hundred years of history proves this beyond doubt.
Mark Frankel, I am baffled by your response to Andy Daer. You say that the Palestinians are entirely to blame for their present situation as they rejected the ‘Zionist Project’. Please explain why any group of people living anywhere should give up land to the colonial project of others? May I have over half your land please? If you don’t give it to me voluntarity I will take it by force and then blame you for the result.
Also why is the ‘right of return’ to a country they were not born, a basic right for the Jewish Diaspora, but should be denied to Palestinians who have been dispossed from their homes in that region?
Are the Palestinians entitled to no rights, even those basic to all other human beings under international law?
As I understand it the Oslo Accords failed when although Yasser Arafat agreed to a Palestinian state based on only 22 % of the land he insisted on East Jerusalem as Capital. The Israelis would not agree to to a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem without which the state would not have been viable.
Of course the Palestinian leadership rejects the illegal occupation and in international law there is the right to resist.
@Mark Frankel, it’s interesting that you feel able to speak with such absolute certainty about what the Palestinians do and don’t want. As for the “eternal feud with the Zionists” you are perhaps unaware that the policy of the current Israeli government is to acquire by force the land of the Palestinians (the remaining 22% they didn’t get the first time round) and if necessary expel or eliminate the indigenous population. That isn’t a feud, it’s colonisation and ethnic cleansing.
Reacting to an invader with that intention is called resistance, as Pamela Manning has just pointed out.
Israel is a legitimate state and entitled to its peace and security like any other state – for example, Pakistan, which was created in similar post-colonial circumstances. This is something the Palestinians have never accepted. That is what their policy of anti-normalisation means.
Of course Israel is entitled to peace and security within the state borders allocated in 1948 although it has never agreed those borders. Since then It has illegally occupied the west bank and annexed East Jerusalem . It is the Palestinians who are entitled to peace and security in those territories. Instead they suffer constant repression by IDF and violence from illegal settlers who destroy property and agriculture. The situation in Pakistan since its creation is not the ideal Mark Frankel appears to suggest. There have been repeated wars over the occupation of parts of Kashmir.
It’s a useful fiction to say Israel is only invading Palestine and denying it statehood because Palestine would do the same to Israel if it had the chance. It’s similar to Putin’s claim about having to invade Ukraine to defend itself from an imaginary future attack by NATO.
Most Palestinians accept Israel’s right to exist. What is lacking is Israel’s acceptance of Palestine’s right to exist.
The prevailing narrative in the decades since Israel was founded in 1948 is that there needs to be a two state solution to the problem that it has inevitably created.
If there is such a solution, which is doubtful, it looks to be further away than ever.
So maybe we ought to be looking at how a single state solution might work?
“there has been no real effort to pursue the two-state option since 2014”
In April 2014, I wrote: ‘We have just returned from a 9½-hour excursion to Nazareth and the Basilica of the Annunciation and then Galilee, which consisted of a vitriolic anti-Arab diatribe. We have no hope for any two-state solution and believe Israel will never accept anything less than the whole of the area within what they show on their map as the International Boundary. There are just a dozen areas, some minute, where there is Palestinian responsibility for civil affairs, internal security and public order.
Moses had two children: Isaac, father of the Jews, and Ishmael, father of the Arabs. That divide still exists. Furthermore, our guide, Moshe’s attitude and monologue were that the Arabs were untermenschen, a sub-species of humanity.
I would love to write at length about this country but I am absolutely devastated by the day.
Yesterday, we liked Jerusalem Old City, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and were impressed by the Wailing Wall and we were enchanted by the Arab Christian guide and the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem but were saddened by the Wall, which we had to go through. The Israeli guide was excellent but sadly emphasized how Jerusalem was the centre of the world.
This nation be proud of its efforts in taming the desert but it should be ashamed of its refusal to respect any Arab.
Sorry. I can’t write anymore.’
The book will be published one day.
Good luck to France, I can’t see any easy solutions. We do need a credible alternative to the two state solution. One state with an emphasis on human rights, far reaching decentralisation and a fair electoral system perhaps enforced by the UN at least temporarily might offer an alternative.
Some of the comments here about Israel are almost embarrassing in their ignorance of history and the current situation. The original item by Mr Arms is gobbledegook at the end in the way it mangles names, Ministerial titles, who and who doesn’t live on the West Bank and worst of all, it’s confusion between haredi Jews, who are the Ultra Orthodox and the ultra nationalists who are the settlers. I’m afraid this is pretty basic stuff if you want to understand the politics of Israel and clearly none of you do.
@ Sandra Fayle,
” you want to understand the politics of Israel and clearly none of you do.”
I suppose that’s us well and truly told then!
We can make the politics of just about any country as complicated as it takes to make the issues totally incomprehensible to all except a perhaps a handful of academic specialists. Just to make it even more complicated, may I just point out that you’ve omitted to say that the politics of the Palestinians needs to be added into the mix too.
Alternatively we can make it very simple and say that the Jewish population of Israel / Palestine, in the main, wants one thing but the Arab population, in the main, wants something quite different.
@Sandra Fayle
“I’m afraid this is pretty basic stuff if you want to understand the politics of Israel and clearly none of you do.”
That’s a pretty blunt statement. Perhaps you could try to justify it by providing your own explanation here for our benefit please…?
The problems with Israel/Palestine boil down to the fact that there are two different groups of people with claims over Palestine, where in the past both Jews and Arabs lived at different times and sometimes together. When two groups of people think they have claims over land, they either agree to share or go to war over it. Ever since 1948, there has been war at different times and it’s now almost continuous. In my lifetime, whenever there has been a possibility of a solution, one side or the other starts firing.
As someone of Jewish descent, I am appalled at the actions of the Israeli Government in brutalising the Palestinian population and seizing their land. As a human being I am equally appalled at the bombing carried out in the name of the Palestinians. As a pacifist, it is my belief that you only solve wars, or avoid them, by sitting round the table with all sides and no preconditions. You also prolong wars by supplying arms to the warring parties.
If the Middle East conflict is ever to be resolved, the international community has to stop taking sides and insist on peace talks.
“As someone of Jewish descent, I am appalled at the actions of the Israeli Government in brutalising the Palestinian population and seizing their land.”
As someone of part-jewish descent – so am I
Mick, I too can say: “As someone of Jewish descent, I am appalled at the actions of the Israeli Government in brutalising the Palestinian population and seizing their land.”. However, what I cannot ask is for the Palestinians to sit round the table with no preconditions!! Palestine is being slowly ethnically cleaned and annexed by Israel and it is always the Palestinians who are the losers in any so-called compromise. As long as Israel suffers no sanctions for its behaviour it will have no reason not to continue as it is.
Israel has a modern well-funded military and sophisticated weapons. Palestinians have neither. It is not about equals. It is about the dispossessor and the dispossessed, who, under international law are allowed to protect themselves with any means available. Why do so many persist in calling Palestinian freedom fighters ‘terrorists’? Under international law they are entitled to resist with whatever means they can? Would you call the Ukrainians terrorists and do you call for them to sit around a table with Russia?
All wars end with a peace treat and the warring factions negotiate it, sometimes under auspices of a neutral party. Preconditions make certain peace will not happen. If you say that you will not negotiate unless the other side agrees to something in advance, then you are not serious about peace anyway. And, yes, the Ukrainian government will eventually have to negotiate peace with Russia. It would save many lives if instead of ongoing war people in dispute sat round the peace table instead of lobbing bombs, killing indiscriminately with cluster bombs or car bombs and the other tools of war.
Oops. Treaty not treat.
@Mick – “ And, yes, the Ukrainian government will eventually have to negotiate peace with Russia.”
I suspect the Ukrainian government is prepared to negotiate with Russia, however, whether Russia is prepared to negotiate with the Ukraine before it has secured the territory it has annexed…
Mick Taylor, I don’t think your argument about preconditions holds water. The Fourth Geneva Convention is an internationally recognised agreement which states that you cannot acquire territory by invading your neighbour. If Israel wants to ignore that, it is effectively saying that a precondition to talks is tearing up Geneva IV.
The Palestinians are saying the opposite, that observing Geneva IV is a precondition. What you’re advocating is uncomfortably close to refusing to appear in court after stealing something unless the judge agrees not to abide by the Theft Act.
@Mark Frankel, I can’t be the only one puzzled to read that the obstacle to a two state solution is that the Palestinians don’t want it. The current situation allows the land grab by Israel to go full steam ahead. Letting Palestine be ratified as a separate country would end that.
I would respectfully ask you to have another think about who has the most to gain from delaying peace talks. I could put that question more robustly, but not within the LDV rules about polite debate ! I would suggest the answer ought to be rather obvious.
Mick Taylor:
“All wars end with a peace treaty”/i> – This is true by definition, without a peace treaty, a war is technically ongoing, but unfortunately a peace treaty does not guarantee the end to a war.
“the warring factions negotiate it” – This is not necessarily true, it may be that the winning faction imposes its conditions.
“Preconditions make certain peace will not happen.” – If this were true, it would mean that international conventions are an obstacle to peace, because international agreements are in effect preconditions for peace.
“If you say that you will not negotiate unless the other side agrees to something in advance, then you are not serious about peace anyway.” – How does this work in the face of genocide? I doubt it is possible to seriously maintain negotiations that flout international conventions. These days peace treaties need to be underwritten by the international community, but this will not happen if the negotiation sets a precedent that is perceived to destabilise world peace, by opening the possibility for a more powerful state to expropriate its neighbour, or even any less powerful country.
My question to you is to ask whether or not you agree with the principle of UN charters, conventions and agreements (human rights, crimes against humanity, genocide, state integrity, refugees etc.). It is possible that you reject the moral realism that appears to be the basis of these agreements.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/24/american-jews-critical-israeli-settlements-west-bank
“American Jews are growing sceptical of Israeli policies towards Palestinians and want limits on aid to prevent settlement growth”
I do really get quite annoyed at the way warmongers twist my words and impute motives I don’t have.
The reality of war, which in my view only comes about because the the pride of the leaders involved, is that many people get slaughtered, much damage is done to infrastructure and billions of pounds are spent on weapons of destruction.
The international community wrings its hands, supplies both sides with weapons, and bemoans the loss of life, instead of starving both sides of weapons and insisting they sit down and talk peace.
The arms industry is immoral and unethical and should be stopped from exploiting fear and mistrust between peoples.
in the 21st century, it is surely possible to devise ways of settling disputes with resorting to bloody wars.
Please note that none of the above is saying that Ukraine should accept invasion or surrender. There is just a better way to resolve any conflict than fighting.
Mick,
I don’t think it is possible to starve Israel or Russia of weapons or insist they sit down and talk peace. They are both major arms exporters. The only sides you could starve of arms are the Palestinians and Ukraine and that would not result in a negotiated peace.
Sky News has a very good documentary a few months back exploring the issues faced by Russian people trying to bring about an end to the war in Ukraine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dI5lO3J6QYc