Israel and UAE reach historic peace deal, Israel to suspend annexation
jpost.com
jpost.com
Another vantage point from the AP.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/08/israel-uae-announce-n...
And Al Jazeera for somewhat completeness.
> ...a deal slammed by the Palestinians who called it a "treacherous stab in the back".
Which Palestinians? All of them?
Further down:
> Hamas condemned the deal, which it said was a "treacherous stab in the back of the Palestinian people".
Ah... Hamas. The same Hamas whose original charter calls for Israel to be destroyed, "invalidated" by Islam[1], whose officials as recently as last year told Palestinians around the world: "You have Jews everywhere and we must attack every Jew on the globe by way of slaughter and killing, if God permits"[2] (he was later forced to walk this back–"how magnanimous" to quote another comment ITT).
Shame on Al Jazeera for regarding an organization openly committed to genocide of Jews and the destruction of Israel as the voice of "the Palestinians." I suppose they think my local butcher here in Toronto (from Hebron) should kill me and my family, because "the Palestinians" are directing him to do so. I'm glad he chooses instead he gives my kids lollipops and be a standup guy and a good friend, despite him being Palestinian and me being Jewish. Thank goodness most of us don't listen to the sectarian warmongering promulgated by the likes of Hamas & Likud and amplified by Al Jazeera & Fox News.
I consider Al Jazeera treating Hamas as the de facto voice of "the Palestians" is an unfair treatment of a group (Palestinians) with diverse views. Saying Hamas represents all of them is a vicious smear against this group of people.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Word... 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Covenant#Statements_abou... 2: https://www.timesofisrael.com/senior-hamas-official-calls-on...
This direct quote they later attribute to Hamas, not multiple Palestinian groups. What do you think the purpose of framing it in this way is? It seems to me to be picking the most inflammatory statement from the most radical of the prominent Palestinian political parties, amplifying it above all other statements, and attributing it not to the political party in question but to all Palestinians. If you read this differently I'd be very interested to learn why you think this statement was put in the first sentence of the story only to be clearly attributed pages in.
I'm not sure what the purpose of referring to my post as a diatribe is. If you care to clarify I would appreciate it.
> The Fatah movement said the UAE is "flouting its national, religious and humanitarian duties" toward the Palestinian cause.
> Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization's (PLO) executive committee, said the UAE has "come out in the open on its secret dealings" with Israel.
Also, I believe it's fair to assume "Palestinians" in the article means the parties/government that represent Palestine, not every individual Palestinian. Especially not Palestinians that don't even live in Palestine.
You're guilty to some extent of the same kind of weasel words, but implying that Hamas does not represent the voice of a significant number of Palestinians, for better and for worse.
Also, the declarations you were citing were made by a known hardliner in Hamas, while your comment implied they were an official Hamas statement.
It's an interesting twist.
[0] https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2020/8/10/why-...
Israel with its technological superiority and gulf states with their resources will want to have a stronger axis to combat that threat.
Somewhat related, SA which has been generous to Pakistan, recently stopped a oil credit line to them. https://www.ft.com/content/49d24c4b-345e-492b-8a8f-c1a550173...
India has historically been a strong ally of Iran and Russia, but finds itself precariously close to war with China, and with weakening ties to both Iran and Russia. India has also been a strong ally of Israel's and recently has improved its relations with the other middle eastern nations.
It is clear that every sign points towards the US alliance for India, but the political brass still can't completely shed the socialist and even communist cloth some of them were cut from, despite 1991 and everything that came after.
India needs to stop blindly following in the footsteps of the thinly veiled Non-Aligned Movement championed by Nehru. It is a bipolar world, neutrality might as well be a death knell.
Non-Aligned seems to match their actual interests. They're big enough that they don't have to be anyone's proxy state.
India allowed China to get their own UN security council seat on the idea of NAM, all while China itself blocked India's entry into the UNSC.
In 1965, India received zero support from either sides, while being pressured by the same UN to withdraw troops despite having gained massive ground in heavily settled parts of Pakistan. Even Indonesia, India's closest NAM ally and co-founder, supported Pakistan in the war.
Every time India has tried to take the moral high ground, it has come out of it in a poorer position.
India can't stay non-aligned while Chinese and Pakistani leadership keep claiming more and more land (Tawang, Junagad, etc) within Indian borders. It can't rely on tacit support from this paper tiger super power Russia or an Iran that is headed towards becoming a Chinese proxy.
For some reason, India is expected to bear the weight of being the moral compass of the world, all while the same world continuously disparages it for being a discriminatory and backward nation led by a fascist leader. (some accusations are admittedly well placed)
Being an ally doesn't mean, India has to be a proxy state. Japan, South Korea, UK or France aren't American proxy states, but are American allies. It simply means to seek relationships where interests align. To pretend that India is non-aligned is to pretend that India does not have interests.
When it comes to partition itself, fair,clean and sensible are the last words I would use to describe it. I maintain that the hasty exit set India and Pakistan to be warring nations till the end of days.
That being said, the idea that any ruler of a princely state should have a right to decide a regions fate is honestly quite weak. Almost all of India's princes happily operated as proxies for British exploitation. Plebiscite would have been the right choice for Kashmir as it was Junagadh. The eruption of invading military forces (put lightly) in independent Kashmir never allowed that plebiscite to ever happen, and for all we know, it never will.
This isn't the future, this is where India is already. India is firmly in the US camp. Upper income Indians(Upper middle class to rich) mostly derive their money from either US company based salaries, businesses or people who work in these businesses and spend money in restaurants, vacations, cars, clothing etc etc. Needless to say as of now the future of India is deeply intertwined with the future of US.
NAM is not realistic for India anymore. We are already in the US camp, like it or not. So far it has worked fine for upper middle class people. A self reliant India has been tried before, and it hasn't worked. Not because the idea itself is bad or people didn't try hard enough, but there's too much domestic factionalism, corruption, selfish-to-animosity levels among various communities in India. This is beyond the fact that India as a country itself is not sure what direction it wants to head towards. Till the 1980s the direction was self-reliance, green revolution, skill and education based industrialization, urbanization, social security etc. From the 1980s the politics of India is drifting towards being a theocratic religious state. Every decade there is some major religious movement. As of now the drift has largely transformed into a very powerful current. In the last decade every single move of the government has been religious policy and law consolidation. The public itself cares little for economic or other growth.
The dirty little secret of Indian political and social scene is we have wasted a record 40 years in domestic religious movements since the 1980s. In the same time, China has arrived on the world scene as a major economic, military and industrial super power. You can't afford to waste half a century(time, resources, political capital) in a highly competitive geo political ecosystem and expect to catch up with the giants(US, EU, China) overnight. Unfortunately our case isn't even as bad as our neighbors, at-least Pakistan, Afghanistan have excuses of them fighting major wars and Bangladesh was just too poor to compete. India's problems are literally our own doing. We wasted time and opportunities.
India today has no options left but to ally with US/West. But it's also a double edged sword. In case of a major war with the Chinese, we will be forced to fight a war alone will all of Eurasia, all by ourselves. This could be disastrous. There are also other problems. US as an ally itself is a difficult partner to deal with. US imposes tariffs on Canada and its European allies, and threatens to cut funding to NATO.
India is in a difficult situation given all these things.
Not very long. But, unfortunately long enough. https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/iran/MAGAZINE-how-i...
There will always be part of population that is less smart (for various reasons). They'll always vote for those parties.
Many people in Israel will not accept a similar situation for the west bank, and will vehemently reject leftists without actual solutions. The settlements are a different faction than people who might vote for leftists if they had demonstrable solutions.
"We must build settlements on contested land, because Hamas is building rockets, because we are on contested land, because we must build settlements on contested land, because Hamas is building rockets..."
If there is no long term solution in view then people will act now to put themselves in the strongest position if something changes. Land swaps in future deals etc are only made stronger, and the faction not interested in giving it away are appeased.
Also Hamas has political control of Gaza but not the west bank. There will be no future where Israel accepts Hamas control of the west bank. If you cannot integrate this into your thinking then think about the US making peace with Isis, etc because some Syrians picked them.
At the same time, we're now going on the fourth generation of residents of these territories who are born, live and die in a no-man's land. They aren't citizens of any nation, they can vote for no government, they can't travel, they can't start a business or hold anything but the most basic property. And neither could their parents or grandparents. And neither will their kids.
The thread of rocket production is plausibly enough to justify a temporary occupation while a better government can be constructed, etc... But the six day war was more than a half century ago. At some point the excuses have to end.
There is not the threat of rocket production so much as there are both rockets and rocket production already. You talk about the six day war but forget Hamas shooting hundreds of rockeslts a day into Israel much more recently than that.
It's ok to say say its unsustainable. What is your solution ? Israelis are tired of hearing that it's unsustainable without a solution. That's why the left isn't getting elected. They have no solution, not even to what is going on today.
I assure you the rest of the world is getting tired as well. But at the end of the day, this isn't my problem to solve. It's Israel's. Eventually, the world will get tired enough to act. It has in the past.
The reason it isn't a crisis for the rest of the world now is fundamentally down to an odd quirk of the way voting demographics work a continent away in the US. And... that actually looks very stable. But eventually something will shift (hell, a Great Collapse of american influence seems not entirely unlikely at this point), and Israel will feel pressure it's been insulated from for the last 53+ years.
That's what "unsustainable" means.
It is literally the least important it's ever been in terms of the world's priority. What other people do you suggest will act? This deal is about Israel normalizing relations with one of the countries that has pushed and paid for the conflict for some time. This sounds like tough talk divorced from reality.
>The reason it isn't a crisis for the rest of the world
Is because it's a low intensity conflict that is expensive to deal with and nobody has a solution that makes sense to both sides.
Banking on the collapse of America to push Israel is funny but not realistic. This peace agreement is exactly because of fear of another obama style middle East policy. This is the UAE and Israel getting together to make sure they can counter whatever nonsense a democrat with Obama leanings starts to pull.
Everyone remembers the Iran deal and Obama's actions in the un at the end of his last term. I promise you people in Israel are as capable of planning as you are, and aren't relying on the fall of the us.
Declared unsustainable but still no solution from you - which is the same reason people with your opinion can't get elected in Israel. Israel is much more sustainable than Gaza but trying to go in to clean out Hamas is not sustainabkr. There are a lot more issues of sustainability than you seem to consider because you aren't considering real world geopolitics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-state_solution#Public_opin...
Israel is settling civilian population there in large amounts, this is forbidden by international law and goes against the claim of "military occupation" (which must be temporary in nature).
Signing the convention in 1949 was a smart thing to do. Watching the world give less than a wit about it in 1949 is the same reason it hasn't been ratified in Israel.
Israel ratified GC I-IV in 1951.
I'm sure everyone understands that this annexation process will resume at the first opportunity, but for the time being this allows everyone to pat themselves on the back.
I think this is great news and I'm very excited to see where it leads.
Even Jordan which 80% of its population is Palestinians doesn’t seem to care much.
The next logical step is to actually allow Palestinians to gain refugee status and removing UNRWA so the refugee camps might actually get some permanent housing, utilities and countries like Lebanon and Syria would have to grant them the same rights as any other refugee group.
How magnanimous of them.
What a lot of people here(In Ethiopia) think is, the reason Trump Admin was favoring Egypt's weak(er) negotiating position over Ethiopia and the other Nile basin countries is, he and his administration wanted to secure Egyptian support for the annexation of Palestinian territories.
If the annexation is off the table, USA will have a little less reason to use its power to pressure Ethiopia into an unfavorable agreement.
Frankly, the whole US effort was quite absurd. USA was seen very favorably but the rush to make Ethiopia the sacrificial lamb (to steal some poor people's land) is something that will have a lasting negative effect.
This article provides some background of what's going on. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/22/trump-administration-af...
Practically, it doesn't look like annexation was ever realistically on the table to begin with. It's much more likely just a campaign slogan Netanyahu leaned on to woo the more hawkish parts of the right. He has nothing to gain and everything to lose by actually trying to push it through.
https://theintercept.com/2017/06/03/hacked-emails-show-top-u...
Bart: And I'll take up smoking and give that up.
Homer: Good for you, son. Giving up smoking is one of the hardest things you'll ever have to do. Have a dollar. [gives a dollar bill to Bart]
Lisa: But he didn't do anything!
Homer: Didn't he, Lisa? Didn't he?
And how do they feel about returning the territories they have illegally annexed or occupied- the Golan heights, East Jerusalem and much of the West Bank?
Because otherwise "peace" just means enjoying what you stole without fear of consequences.
No, such a rule doesn't exist. Seems more like "an eye for an eye" than any form of civilized law.
Plenty of Israelis would happily vote to trade some or all of those regions for stable alliances with their neighbors.
After the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, that dream was never going to happen though.
Israelis largely care about national security. If you could assure them that giving up those regions would guarantee peace, you would win an election.
Eh. Are you sure you thought this through? There are about 800 thousand Israelis living in occupied and annexed territories. That's 10% of the country. Do you think they would vote to leave their homes? That people would be happy to see house and land prices skyrocket?
Come on, let's not kid ourselves: land is monstrously valuable, Israelis are reaping enormous gains from the occupation. You're pretending it's indifferent, that Israelis just want peace. But for the meanwhile they'll just keep getting more free land, thank you very much.
70% would. Government would.
>Israelis are reaping enormous gains from the occupation.
Some israelis. Most just pay for it, not getting anything in return.
> 70% would. Government would.
Please. Stop and think. There are countries who had their youth decimated in atrocious wars to conquer portions of new territory proportionally smaller then the one Israel is occupying almost without damage.
This cavalier attitude you're showing is part of the self deception of Israelis in regards to the occupation. They keep building cities in land that doesn't belong to them, but refuse to admit they're actually reaping any benefit. That the country is becoming substantially larger and more spacious. That there is space- or there will be some time in the future- for more industries, more fields, more suburbs, more people to come and live in Israel- the people Israeli leaders keep inviting to move from France, from the UK, from the US.
But of course this would be an admissions that Israel is reaping some unjust benefit. That it might want peace, but it also wants to keep what it gained. That peace is a negative, because it implies an end to the progression of appropriations.
> We can go on creating a great country for the Israeli Arabs, Jews, Druze and Christians
So you're arguing for the one-state solution. You do realize that that means the end of the nature of Israel as a "Jewish state" (definition that was just sanctioned in the law), and that a democracy in which half of the citizens are Palestinians is going to fundamentally change the nature of the country?
Wait, are you saying that they would not vote for Israel's government?
And how would this "autonomy" be different from full sovereignty? And in case it were different, to which superior body would this autonomy be subjected? And who would have democratic control of this superior body?
Because if the answers are respectively 'different', 'Israel' and '(current) Israeli citizens', then what you're talking about is proper, institutionalized apartheid.
The situation now is that vast parts of the West Bank are ultimately under Israel's control- Israel can decide to appropriate portions of land and build on it, build infrastructure for the exclusive use of settlers, and deploys the army to protect Israeli squatters from Palestinians trying to retrieve their possessions. Of course the settlers are allowed to vote for Israel's government, while the non-Israeli Palestinians living all around them have no rights and cannot vote for the government that has these powers on their land. This is de facto apartheid.
You're saying that this is "not far from" the ideal solution for you, and you'd be happy to turn it into apartheid de jure?
This problem can be easily solved: let everybody out, don't let anybody in, don't let them vote (as it happens with Israelis living in other countries). We did it twice: Sinai peninsula and Gaza Strip, we can do it again.
But this is very small problem. The real one is return of 2-5 millions of Palestinian refugees. Integrating them into Israel society would take time and effort.
Is it that surprising that a tour guide is just an ordinary person who may have some bad opinions?
Given the treatment the members of the various Abrahamic faith's have given each other over history, I'm not sure if that is an inducement, flowery euphemism for a mortal threat, or something somewhere in between.
Quite a non-realistic view of history and people's behavior. People will do bad things regardless of (and in-spite of) religion, and we have seen it (WWI/II, the massacres of the Uyghurs, the Holocaust, etc.). Humans are bloody creatures after all.
https://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/ethiopian-jews-once-hai...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32813056
https://www.newsweek.com/2016/10/07/why-ethiopian-jews-israe...
It's a pretty sad state of affairs that cancelling a single recent plan to deteriorate an already illegal situation, is sufficient to be portrayed as some kind of historic peace treaty.
At this point Netanyahu can propose some other nonsense plan during his election cycle and win with the 'wartime president' bonus, then cancel them afterwards during Trump's election cycle to give him an ostensible diplomatic victory, while continuing the rest of the charade. The situation only gets worse but people are supposed to applaud it? Give me a break.
Now whether you consider the historical claim of a state established by the UN but with no support from the Arab world, one of the two parties that actually mattered, over that party's land, and the numerous wars to expand further as being legitimate compared to Russia's is an exercise left to the reader.
[0] https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2020...
Allies have treaties, pacts, and unwritten norms. An ally cannot engage in an "illegal" act, they can only violate a treaty, pact, or norm. There is no legal framework because neither ally is sovereign over the other. In order for you to fall under a legal framework there must be some entity that is sovereign over you.
A citizen (or subject) of some sovereign does not have a "pact" or "treaty" with the sovereign.
As an American citizen I do not have a pact or treaty with my municipal, state, and federal government. They have sovereignty and therefore I am subject to their laws.
But this misses my point. I didn't mean "illegal act between allies". I mean the same act against a 3rd (independent) party will be judged as legal or illegal based on whether the 2nd party committing it is friend or foe. Friend bombs a hospital, they fight for freedom. Enemy bombs a hospital, they're a terrorist.
The occupation/annexation is a similar topic. Russia and Israel committed some of the same fouls but in the case of the latter it's a "matter of debate" that never reaches a conclusion. That's because the West doesn't actually want to set a precedent that it's OK. So it's like a never ending trial and as long as that goes on everybody's free to go about their business.
You probably noticed by now that almost no leader explicitly approves Israel's actions, they approve them implicitly by inaction. They always have vague rhetoric which gives the appearance of support for some lofty, worthwhile ideals without actually stating their support for the particular actions or methods, and without making any connection between these and the aforementioned ideals. Then it's left to you to map those words over the real life situation and interpret that your own way. But I learned long ago that what's not said speaks volumes more than what's said.
This is exciting news, indeed. Israel, with its huge technology sector and UAE with its massive financial resources could together work to transform the Middle East.
The announcement alluded to future similar deals with other Arab countries. Likeliest would be Saudi Arabia, another oil-rich moderate state that already has informal back-channel relations with the Jewish state.
We shouldn't fool ourselves that this will bring peace in the region this year, but it will certainly put a kink in Iran's expansionist/destabilization efforts, and it will bolster the Trump Administration's prestige in the region, pushing other countries to "fall in line" as it were and support some kind of general framework for peace if not an outright full recognition of Israel's legitimacy.
I am not optimistic.
https://www.vox.com/2020/7/13/21317900/israel-west-bank-anne...
I don't have the background to discern if there's something amiss in the referenced Vox article.