Israel, Cyprus and Greece agree to link power grids via subsea cable
reuters.com
reuters.com
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dominicdudley/2018/02/26/ten-st...
https://ceoworld.biz/2020/03/03/ranked-military-strength-of-...
Those rankings are accurate when looking through the lens of "how many offensive resources do they have", but when you say "on virtually any dimension" I think one needs to also take geography into account.
For example Switzerland is also ranked well below Israel, but good luck invading the Swiss on their home turf.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2014/feb/19/swis...
Israel is... not in a comparable "surrounded by friendly democracies" scenario.
Israel has 0 island-hopping capabilities compared to Greece's ability to patrol its Aegean waters.
Is real has many costal patrol ships and a few subs. The Greeks have a navy suitable for their archipelago waters
Which conflict was that?
"Most" as a percentage, not an absolute number. There were approximately 60.000 Jews who were murdered from Greece which amounts for 87% of the total Jewish population in the country. Hungary had some 500k loses, Poland 3M, Romania at least 200k, Soviet Union 1,3M etc.
So long as Israel plans for a future where such arrangements get rescinded, they could safely operate an energy market across the middle east and parts of Europe.
Could be a good counter way to counter russian oil, and pave way for a very lucrative post-oil society. Middle eastern countries have a lot of solar and empty land for energy-storage. With many of these middle eastern countries having the capital for large green-tech investments.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current#Ad...
Fresh water is way worse than air, and salt water way worse than fresh.
On DC lines, fields don't vary (much) so induce negligibly little currents.
In fresh water, there are fewer dissolved ions, but not none. Losses are less.
In perfectly pure water, small losses would come from swinging water molecules to point this way and that. Raindrops hanging on AC transmission line wires consume negligible power.
[0] https://www.homedepot.com/p/Scalewatcher-Nano-Electronic-Des...
From what I have been able to determine, nobody has shown that such a gadget works with any reliability. I.e., it might work under certain circumstances, but there is no way to know if your water and pipes match such a circumstance without buying. And, the prices quoted seem badly excessive. There is probably not more than $5 worth of parts in there, if in fact there are any.
Personally, I would not buy one. You could experiment with a permanent magnet, but it would be hard to know if it was helping or making it worse.
A somewhat similar sort of gadget is supposed to actually work, on diesel immediately before injection into truck engine combustion chambers, to produce more complete combustion.
Long AC lines in air also have a finite resistance between wires, but it is much higher and not much of a concern.
>The use of two HVDC cables will provide the link between all four sites. The use of two cables constitutes the bipolar operation of the project. A return path through earth, however, is provided in order to allow for the reinstatement of rated or half-rated power transfer through converter switching, in case of faults and disconnections of one of the two 500MW elements of the converter, or one of the two HVDC cable links.
(https://www.euroasia-interconnector.com/wp-content/uploads/2... p17)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_Troll and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_Visby%E2%80%93N%C3%A4s
come to mind.
Those two examples are rather small. Not even at the level of supergrid interconnectors proposed, or built elsewhere.
Technology improves and its availability and costs change. In this case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulated-gate_bipolar_transis... which appear everywhere from induction cooking fields/plates in household appliances to power electronics in electric cars and locomotives, upwards to so called smart- or super-grids(in their endpoints/substations). I'm sure there are even more applications of the enabling IGBTs which I'm unaware of.
Certainly with more and more power coming from renewables that can’t be switched on or off at will, that’s a gain for all.
Also, as to the poking, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_Authority_of_Cypru... says:
“In 2015, the EAC generated a total of 4,128 GWh of electricity consuming 947,226 tonnes of fuel costing €288,632,000. Maximum demand in the areas controlled by the Republic of Cyprus reached 939 MW. A total of 2.0 GWh of the produced electricity in 2015 valued €240,000 ended up in the area occupied by Turkey and no money could be collected for it.”
I guess that might stop once Cyprus can export power to the EU (but I also wonder why they would produce such excessive amounts of electricity. Could be to keep the peace, because they promised the UN, or something similar?)
The amount that couldn't be collected is less than 1% of the total generation. So my guess is it's due to decades old infrastructure where lines just happen to cross over to where the dividing line ended up. Something similar happened in Berlin, where two West Berlin train lines happened to pass through East Berlin briefly, and were allowed to continue to do so even after the wall went up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_U-Bahn
I can easily see the utility deciding that it's easier and cheaper to just let a small bit of power get stolen than incur the costs of changing that infrastructure, as well as the PR costs of cutting off that power. Overall grid losses are likely to be 5% or so anyway.
You'll never find . used as a thousands separator in the UK, Australia or English-speaking Canada either.
Just today there was a story in the news here in Norway how the windmills in Sweden is causing a massive price disparity between north and south of Norway, due to lack of transmission capability.
These days the price disparity can be over 50%, and Sweden is planning to massively expand their windmill generation up north.
[1]: https://www.nrk.no/urix/tror-svensk-vindkraftsatsing-vil-gi-...
:)
Sweden has an interesting problem where we want to build more wind power, but it can only really be done in the north at scale, but then the transmission capacity down south is missing, and that's where all the consumers are!
The project that is meant to "poke turkey in the eye" is the EuroMed gas pipeline which is a different project.
But to be fair, turkey is welcome to join both forums, although this will probably mean that they will have to accept the application of international law in their maritime borders
On the other hand Israel and Turkey have mutual regional enemies and have collaborated both economically and militarily. Turkey manufactures and uses the Israeli Popeye missile under license, and I'm sure there are other collaborations I'm not aware of. Israeli teams have helped in earthquake relief efforts in Turkey. Historically the Jewish population of the Ottoman Empire were loyal subjects, because Ottoman hegemony provided them with security against their Arab neighbours.
So I doubt the Israelis are primarily doing this to spite the Turks, they're not exactly best buddies and it's useful to have leverage, but it's not in their interests to antagonise Turkey unnecessarily. I think it's just a matter of Israel looking after their own best interests in terms of energy security.
To be honest Greeks and Cypriots making life better for themselves doesn't have to be inherently a slight against Turkey either. I think the geopolitical dimension of this is over-baked.
https://www.haaretz.com/largest-natural-gas-reserve-discover...
The reserve, Leviathon, is the largest amount of natural gas discovered in the world in the last decade and is located in approximately 5,400 feet (1,645 meters) of water, about 130 kilometers offshore of Haifa and 29 miles (47 kilometers) southwest of the Tamar discovery.
It would certainly make sense for Israel to get into the generation business and sell power to others. The country is too small to otherwise make use of 16 trillion cubic feet of NatGas for personal consumption. I was also under the assumption they were building a gas pipeline to Europe.
As background:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Cyprus
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/20/turkey-insists...
Edit: It should be noted the article takes a pro-Turkish stand, but it does demonstrate the conflicting claims.
It seems Turkey's view is that countries like Malta, Cyprus, Cuba, New Zealand etc can't have EEZs, let alone islands that are part of a country, like Shetland, Hawaii, the Aleutian islands, etc.
Now sure they can claim whatever they want, but with EU, US and UN against them it's rather moot.
Also note that there is little reference for the Greek part of the interconnector for which there was a great debate. Greece decided to create the part connecting Crete with Attica on it's own citing delays that cost Greece hundrends of millions a year because it is forced to operate diesel plants in Crete.
Also Greece also has the longest and deepest AC connection in the world under construction (2 cables connecting Peloponesse with Crete). One of the cables is already operational.
Maybe, but judging by the history page(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=EuroAsia_Intercon...), it was initially created by someone in the US and later edited by a diverse set of editors. So unlikely the entire page is an advertisement. If you see some specific snippets you think don't fit on Wikipedia, Be Bold and delete them (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Be_bold)
The article fails to address the controversy between Greece and Euroasia interconnector. The only reference I can find is that in the top image, the line connecting Attika and Crete became dashed at some time. Also Greece cited that Ariadne interconnector is a company with only 25k capital and no previous completed project.
The biggest story in recent years was the Elwha dam removal. It's stunning to see how much the landscape has changed since: https://therevelator.org/elwha-dam-removal/
And a recent story about a Skagit river dam: https://www.king5.com/article/news/investigations/seattles-s...
Maybe if we had public utilities, however, we would actually invest in 'unprofitable' nuclear energy and save our planet in the process, since we wouldn't be beholden to making shareholders a profit.
Not sure what the current highest volt transmissions are. Maybe a couple million volts on some DC lines? But I think that's good enough for hundreds, if not thousands, of miles of efficient transmission.
There will be a delay of course, which is the cable impedance (inductance), mostly due to the speed of electricity not being infinite in a conductor.
A bit like there is no limit for the length of a stick you can push with your arm. There's only resistance if it's on the ground (push it in space to visualize a superconductor). It also has inertia (mass, which is inductance). And at longer lengths, you won't see the end move before the movement you impulsed has reached the end at ~the speed of sound in that material.
Now, to go a bit into the details:
A/C can also exploit "skin effect" where a high frequency A/C signal only travels on the outside of conductors. That way, you can make thinner conductors (just coat regular cables in an expensive conductor)... Up to a certain point, since if you need to carry more power, you need extra large cables, hollow ones, and/or multiple cables). That wastes part of the conductor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_effect
With A/C, you can also use transformers, but not with D/C, which has traditionally been an hindrance to high-voltage DC. You have to generate alternative current, or use boost circuits (basically charge a capacitor at constant current to increase voltage). Cutting power in high-power A/C is simpler, since you can do it when voltage crosses 0 V.
I'm not sure what the pros and cons of both are when it comes to economics. It seems D/C is getting more affordable thanks to semiconductors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current#Ad...
Greece, Cyprus and Israel agreed to construct the EastMed Pipeline[0], which crosses into the Turkish EEZ and even territorial waters. Does that run counter to the UNCLOS or not?
Also, please correct me if I got anything in my understanding wrong.
See here https://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unc...
The likelihood of that seems astronomically slim, but it's still a possibility.
https://fanack.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2014/10/natura...
There's a "nose" that drops down from Turkey, and the EastMed pipeline goes straight from Cyprus to Crete, so it would cross into that "nose". It says "territorial waters" there, so I'm confused as to whether that's so or, if not, what it is.
The crux of the dispute though is that while that's how Greece and Cyprus interpret their rights, there is no provision in UNCLOS for handling overlaps, it only says there should be an agreement.
As far as the pipeline is concerned, I think the Greek plan would be to make the pipeline, a bit more to the south where Greek and Cypriot zones meet.
That being said, Turkey has been invited to join the eastMed pipeline
Here s another image https://trendsresearch.org/insight/turkey-and-the-geopolitic...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_economic_zone
(new acronym for me, and I imagine a few others too)
https://www.eez.de/ but to be honest, https://edeka-volker-klein.de/edeka-elbe directly adjacent is preferrable(for groceries, at least)
:-)
I often wonder if places like this are where real green energy revolution will start. Perhaps the greatest motivation for off-grid solar is not having access to a grid in the first place. The first targets in many wars are the power plants, plants fed by fossil fuel deliveries. A country powered by widespread small "gridless" solar power solutions would be very resilient in a crisis, much more difficult a target in a war. Maybe Lebanon can move forward without a reliable national grid.
If this becomes a thing without charging non-users a flat fee for the electricity grid, then the grid will fall into a death spiral as renewables+storage become cheaper - namely, fewer people using the grid will increase the relative cost for each remaining user, encouraging them to go off-grid which further increases the relative cost of grid-attachment.
The ex-Texas US grid is reliable because of economic reasons (especially industrial) and the Texas grid is not that reliable for economic reasons!
If you leave the interstate system and drive the state and national highways, especially east of the Mississippi River, you'll see industrial facilities all over the place in small towns and cities, etc. They consume a lot of electricity, so it is in the national interest to have a good grid. West of the Mississippi: go read the Bershire Hathaway annual report from a few weeks ago. Warren Buffett spends quite a bit of space writing about how and why they are spending billions on the future of the grid.
This is why regulation is needed and competition on the lowest level of infrastructure a bad idea.
In Germany, we have a legal mandate (per §36 EnWG, https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/enwg_2005/__36.html) for the dominant local utility to provide the core gas and electricity network upon which the customer can choose any utility to provide gas and electricity (with this utility then paying a set rate for using the network to the local utility). Additionally, §11 EnWG (https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/enwg_2005/__11.html) forces all network-operating utilities to keep their network operation "safe, reliable and free of discrimination" - and the authority BNetzA has the legal power to actually enforce this.
Events like the shoddy maintenance that led to a number of wild fires in California or the lack of winterization that led to the Texas debacles in 2011 and 2021 simply would not happen here.
And I also believe Germans would not produce or tolerate the California or Texas debacles.
Probably because I'm advocating for government owned or at least heavily regulated infrastructure.
> The risk is that the monopoly gets fat and lazy, but there are many examples of failures from both approaches.
Agreed (and California is a perfect example)... with a monopoly situation (and in "captive market" situations such as housing where people can't go without the services of the market) regulation agencys need teeth. Basically you want pitbulls, not poodles.
With hookup cost to a new property often measuring in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, the non-connection fee/penalty would have to be very high.
In pacific northwest, estimate 10-15k per electrical pole. Plus any necessary upgrades to the system. Plus easements. Plus maintenance costs. Plus cutting the trees. Plus then paying for power. ... A kickass solar rig and backup generator is very cheap by comparison.
Here in ZA the economy got screwed because nobody was prepared for the centralized provider (Eskom) to go down, which it did because of corruption and race-based quotas (BEE) firing senior white staff. Centralized orgs centralize risk and corruption.
"We should improve society somewhat." "Yet you participate in society. Curious!"
[1] https://www.avrupa.info.tr/en/plugging-turkey-eu-electricity...
[2] https://www.dw.com/en/nord-stream-2-pipeline-row-highlights-...
The issue is that unlike other cases they were never left to their own devices and let sort their own shit out.
The first time I ever went to Beirut over 10 years ago, I asked a partner of a large Civil Engineering firm
Me : "Why does the power go out all the time?"
The response: "There is no political will to fix this."
I didn't understand the reply. Surely there was immense value in economic development in doing this ?
I drew parallels to being in South America, particularly Ecuador, who had the same issue back in the 90's. That caused so much economic loss. I understood the issue was rainfall swings drove hydro power outages. They finally built extra capacity, and now brownouts are a thing of the past. Everyone benefitted.
But lebanon had no such luck. Why?
I didn't understand the undertones of what was being told to me. But the answer was there. It is a political issue, but not a question of will. Its a question of money.
The neighborhood generators now have cartel power over the generation of electricity. They have a vested interest in the government NOT producing cheap electricity for the masses. Anything that disrupts the status quo means their business is effectively over.
Full 360: The market response to electricity production during civil war, gave lebanon electric resilience (via power generators)...but now with regulatory capture, the incentives are only to sustain the broken model.
The icing on the cake is that water tanker cartels steal from the municipal water supply in the first place.
I'm not arguing pro or against Bitcoin, just stating reality is nuanced.
Allow me to contribute a bit and please don't take this the wrong way. I understand why you are using tariff. You are using the spanish tarifa.
The word commonly used to represent bus payments is "fare" (train fare, etc). Hope this helps!.
Tariff in english is commonly used instead to refer to the word "arancel" i.e. the cost to export / import food, etc.
The rule of law needs to put its thumb on the scale if you want to get rid of the predatory elements.
I can't help but imagine how different this state would be if the governor of California came from a rental apartment, or from living in their car, and not the latest approved candidate from the old California political machine (Governor Gavin Newsom is a respected SF judge's son, Mayor Eric Garcetti's father was the LA DA for 20 years). Maybe political priorities would actually shift to the working poor rather than the landowning elite for the first time ever in California.
"Lack of will" as a phrase suggests nobody feels like doing anything about it, when in fact, lots of people want to do different things and those with more power are winning out over those with less, regardless of which thing would be maximally beneficial.
This isn't a slight against you or the GP for using the phrase - it's just something that sticks in my craw when I hear it. Don't even ask me how I feel about the word "unprecedented."
Interesting insights. You get most of it right about Lebanon: Yes, you're right its all about money and maintaining the status quo. But its not so much about the neighborhood generators. To be honest, thats a bit low brow for Leb politicians. When we're talking about corruption its usually to the tune of $10s of millions. Case in point, look at the longtime central banker who funneled the nation's bonds through his brother's trading company and pocketed $300 million in commissions. [1] Now were talking real money.
With electricity, yes, its about vested interests - but its also about future interests. Who will control new power plants? New Power grids? New billing systems? Can we make sure that for each Sunni hired in this position we have 1 Christian and 1 Shia as well?
Thats why nothing ever gets done in Lebanon.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-04/u-s-said-...
It's comparatively cheap, immediately useful and solves the intermittentcy problem renewables face.
There are already multiple 1500km+ working transmission lines in China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-voltage_electricity...
Much higher pressure, I imagine it would have been a desert too.
Wouldn’t a higher partial pressure of Oxygen have opened quite a few new evolutionary branches?
How disappointing (and unsurprising) that Lebanon is not included in this group.
That country has suffered so much recently, COVID, Economic Depression, Bank Holiday, Syrian Refugee crisis, Explosions...
and yet their politicians can't seem to do 2+2. Horrible.
This is true at least in french, portuguese, and spanish.
I understand the problem that a "bank holiday" in the US is actually used to identify a federal holiday.
I don't think this expression has been used a lot in recent times (in anglo nations) since there hasn't been hyperinflation in US, UK...but there is a record of such expression :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_(...
As a half Croat: sorry, won't happen. Croatia's economy is tourism dominated and will stay that way. There is a bit of agriculture and industry (especially shipbuilding), but nowhere enough to compete with heavyweights such as Germany.
For those out of the loop: the Balkans have historically suffered from brain drain - first during the Yugoslavia era where many fled/emigrated from realcommunism, then during the wars for obvious reasons, and now simply because Germany and other EU nations pay way better and those who don't find work in tourism find it elsewhere in Europe instead. Good luck finding a nurse on the Balkans... Germany has to recruit from the Philippines meanwhile.
The fact that Croatian (and other Balkan countries') politics are extremely corrupt doesn't help much either, it's really sad.
Regarding Southern Italy: similar situation re/ brain drain, plus the added complexity of having to deal with the Mafiya.
Regarding Turkey: Turkey already is an economic powerhorse and a regional hard-power leader - the early Erdogan years showed what Turkey is capable of. Unfortunately Erdogan turned into Erdolf and investors are pretty much shying away from Turkey as a result of the instability, not to mention that Turkey is directly adjacent to the Syria cluster-fuck.
And it has little to do with "progressive" minds, and everything to do with opportunity. I personally have known Croatians of all politics who have left the country due to lack of opportunity, not because they were progressive.
Also, leaving the country because of lack of opportunity becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Related: Turkey is not an economic powerhouse at all. You can't have such a fragile economy and still be called that. You think Erdoğan keeps poking at sensitive matters because he has power to do so? Those are just distractions.
The question is whether brain drain, crime, and corruption are due to incurable pathologies or symptoms of transient disadvantages.
How? There isn't much trade between Africa/Arabia and Europe other than oil, some agricultural products and used cars/outright waste.
> The natural beauty that attracts tourism can help repatriate the talented diasporas.
That's already the case in Croatia, many pensioners who worked in richer European countries retire back in Croatia because they can "live like kings" from pensions that would barely fetch a 1br micro apartment otherwise. For 500€ you can get a 75 m² flat in the center of Rijeka - in Munich that would be around 1500-2000€.
And those in working age... it's rare for them to return to their homelands for that reason.
> The question is whether brain drain, crime, and corruption are due to incurable pathologies or symptoms of transient disadvantages.
Neither, in my opinion. "Incurable pathologies" is bordering on racism, but it aren't "transient" issues on the other side. What's needed is massive amounts of wealth redistribution across Europe, combined with throwing the whole lot of political elites into jail (and that's also sadly valid for Germany, just look at Andreas Scheuer or the MPs who allegedly got huge kickbacks for anti-corona masks).
Basically Europe would need something like what the US did post-1945: a complete clean-up. Absent that, I'd also accept a revolution of the masses, but that isn't on the pipelines anywhere except in France...
Adam Smith not only promoted specialization but also extending the "reach" of trade. Politicians have the power to ruin things but they only succeed when riding the coat-tails of talented makers. I'd focus on promoting the makers rather than punishing past ruiners. Nihilism is never the answer.
Who builds the next startup, starts a franchise chain or scouts investors to build a new machine, if you can always double your salary by serving rich foreigners?
It's sort of a Dutch disease [1]. I've seen it happening from afar to Barcelona, which was on route to become what Berlin now is in terms of IT/programming back in ~2005-2006 but the ever increasing rent prices caused by tourism put an end to that (plus the 2008-2010 crisis, of course, which hit Spain especially hard). I had expected the same thing to happen to Amsterdam, but it looks like it managed to hold up better.
Well... many of the German tourists only come to Amsterdam for smoking pot on a day or weekend trip, and the French additionally for a night in the brothels since sex work is banned in France, so all you need is a lot of cheap hotels with beds, no stuff like beach resorts or other... more high-class venues to deal with these people.
Additionally, over the last years many of the "coffee shops" (weed shops) have closed down - in the early 2000s there were 280+ in Amsterdam, now there are 166. The government wants to introduce a "weed pass" that's only for Dutch citizens to further crack down on weed tourism: https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/corona-coffeeshops-101.htm...
Hawaii's education suffers dramatically because the work is all in tourism - this is firsthand knowledge from teachers I know over there.
Anyway, we definitely can protect installations from stand-off weapons: CIWS systems like the Phalanx can shoot them down these days, and they're relatively cheap. It's not perfect protection - eventually one will get through - but it does raise the cost of a successful attack substantially.
Ideally, in war, you destroy their military, or at least damage it enough for the other party to concede and discuss peace terms, and leave the rest alone.
WW2 was, I believe, the last war where they went for complete destruction of infrastructure, industry, and civilians. The Allies firebombed Dresden and nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is estimated that 50-55 million civilians died in WW2, of which part due to disease and famine. No conflict since has had that high a civilian casualty rate.
Military is a deterent because of the threat of retalitation, not because they literally prevent other countries from doing things in the moment.
The CIA had cooked up a bonkers covert mission to send a submarine with an airlock right into the soviets’ top submarine harbor. There, divers were to place a tap an underwater data cable that fed the nearby submarine base—a crown jewel of Soviet sub deployment intel.
The CIA knew the cable passed through the harbor somewhere. But where?
To search the entire harbor for a tiny cable would have taken too long. The mission planners were stuck on this problem until one day one of the CIA planners is out on his personal boat. He sees a sign that says “WARNING: Undersea Cable” and has a moment of clarity.
They brought a translator, popped up the periscope in the Soviet harbor, and spotted an equivalent sign which they used to carry out the mission successfully.
For extra credit they had to go back to exfiltrate the data if my memory serves.
Clever!
That would surprise me. Greek Cyprus and Greece aren't exactly friends with Turkey. To put it mildly.
Would they have a common grid on Cyprus? I doubt it.. There's so much unresolved bad blood there (thinking about Varosha).
Seeing as they're going to the extent of running miles of copper, does anyone know if they're planning on laying fibre at the same time?
I'm sure it's more complex than this, if the case.
Why AC? For a given power transmission line, higher voltage will lower transmission loss. Historically, it was easier, cheaper, and more efficient to get higher voltages with AC using transformers. These days, DC is still more complicated and expensive than AC, but the efficiency has gone up and the price has gone down somewhat on the DC side of things. And if grid synchronization is a problem and you're transmitting a lot of power, the benefits might outweigh the costs.
(Yes, I know the influence of Hezbollah over Lebanese politics makes this development unlikely. I'm just saying it would be a good idea for both countries to get closer together. Source: I used to be in the military and served as a UN military observer in the region.)
But there's also a bit of a false equivalence here: Israel is a true democracy, which ranks significantly higher on lists of economic and individual freedoms than the nations you just named. Israel also soundly beat Lebanon in several wars, and Lebanon's conflict with Israel is rooted in religious hatred - it's not like Lebanon is taking a moral stand here. Hezbollah, which has run Lebanon for years, is an Iran-supported extremist / religious / terrorist group.
For whom? What does this even mean?
What # election are they on? Four in the last 2 years?
My understanding of Israeli politics is that it's two major parties (roughly, conservative and liberal) + a few smaller bloc parties that generally line up with the same major party.
And that the math of this vs the majority needed tends to result in a larger number of elections.
I believe something similar tends to happen in Italy? And maybe Spain?
The flaw, in the sense that overly-frequent elections are unproductive to the business of governing, as I see it is matching a static legal mandate (a government must be able to compose a strict majority) with a variable system (number and size of parties), that leads to some edge cases that make the former difficult / unsustainable.
I'm American though, so I'm looking at this from our (probably to the rest of the world) crazy winner-take-all tilt.
It seems like parliamentary democracies would be improved by either (a) implementing policies and laws that ensure a larger number of smaller blocs, with which alliances can be made (preference voting?) or (b) having "deescalator" clauses if election churn happens, to lower the threshold required to form a sitting government (which then presumably ramps back up over time).
Yes but not all of them which is the problem. Ask poor Palestinians how democratic Israel is. It would be like if the US made laws specifically to imprison masses of black people and then say "we are a democracy, except for those who have been in prison".
The ones that can't vote in Israel are part of another nation (whether recognized or not) and they vote as part of that nation. A better analogy would be saying that Mexicans can't vote in the US (even though Mexican-Americans can).
I love when people oversimplify things like that.
The important point is that Israel’s problems are largely detached from the flaws of its current leaders. Meanwhile the problems in the listed countries are often created or reinforced by their current or former leaders.
Apartheid South Africa also didn't give rifles to the conscripted black Africans either and ask them to patrol white cities.
For the same reasons.
Also, simply not true; https://www.ynetnews.com/article/rJVoNmyCP
Non-apartheid-type governments by definition do not have laws that discriminate by race.
Both Apartheid South Africa and contemporary Israel had and have laws explicitly preventing an emormous fraction of their society from every getting near military hardware.
Again, for the same reason.
I personally couldn't care, but the OP was falsely stating that Israel had no race defined laws in common with Apartheid South Africa.
[They have a few more in common, but this was one example I chose].
Unless of course Israeli jews really, really, really want to avoid training generation after generation after generation of Arabs citizens in IDF tactics and technology. Every year, year-in, year-out.
Clearly not trusting people is very obviously a form of government sanctioned discrimination.
Which again, is also why Apartheid South Africa also didn't feel comfortable handing millions of young Zulu men (ironically) Israeli designed R4 automatic weapons.
Peas, pods.
> National service is compulsory in Israel, with some exemptions — three years for men and two years for women. This rule also applies to the country's non-Jewish Druze and Circassian communities.
> Muslim Bedouins, who tend to identify more as Israeli than other Arabs, and Christian Arabs can voluntarily sign up and each minority is represented by a couple of hundred members of the armed forces.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/arab-israelis-are-joining...
Exactly the same situation in Apartheid South Africa. There were whole battalions of volunteer black soldiers. Hell, after 1981 there were even black commissioned officers.
But under no circumstances where they arming and training the 'enemy' wholesale - as you said before your edit 'to protect THEIR people'. (Telling choice of words there).
You keep making my case for me.
Israel is in a tough situation where there are civilians with relative who swear they want to kill al jews. Israel tries to be fair in this scenario.
A matter of fact is, non jews can vote, join the police the army and the country has laws that gives non jews the same rights as jews. There are scholarship for non jews, and even programs to make sure they are getting to be doctors lawyers etc.
Heck, there are non jewish judges (in the supreme court!), parliament members, and government ministers.
The situation is far from normal or sane, But this is very different than what the situation in SA was.
Now, all of this might change, as there are very dark forces that through the political situation in israel are trying to change israel from being a liberal democracy (at least striving to be) to become a theocracy/ethnocracy.
If they succeed, you might be right in calling israel an apartheid state.
It undermines the argument.
Use a different one if you want to make that argument, because that one is bad.
Rather, like Apartheid South Africa, Arab Israelis are being very, very clearly told that they cannot be TRUSTED in bulk with something like assault rifles in the presense of Jewish citizens.
Apartheid was not merely Jim Crow type laws - it was existential.
I deliberately chose these laws because they get to the heart of what an Apartheid state is.
On that specific point they are being discriminated in favor of, though. Please show the specific harm, of how not forcing someone to join the military but still allowing them to if they want, is harm, if you disagree.
If you have other examples of them being discriminated against, just use those.
> they cannot be TRUSTED
They are allowed to volunteer if they want. They aren't being prevented from joining. Instead they are only not being forced to, which is discrimination in favor of the people who are not forced to join.
You need to show an actual specific law that harms them, to support your argument. Not forcing people to join the military is a benefit, not a drawback.
There are basically no circumstances, where not forcing someone to join the military, is a drawback.
It's true they are exempted from the draft, but I don't quite see how that constitutes discrimination _against_ them.
I really don't know the answer to that. It's hard to say what kind of influence will work on the Israel apartheid, but a declared ongoing external war makes a strong impression that is an influence on the wrong direction.
What I do know is that black South Africans begged us not to do business with their country until apartheid was abolished. Many of us (and even the US in the end) obliged and cut ties with South Africa. Palestinians are similarly begging us not to do business with Israel over similar human rights violations. We did (eventually) heed the black South Africans' call, so why can't we today heed the Palestinians' call?
While I don’t at all agree with the settlements, the truth is that’s a lightening rod point and the actual amount of land is a drop in the bucket. Israel has always been willing to trade land for peace. But both parties must want peace.
Bollocks - there is a complete naval blockade.
[Before the Hasbarati downvote me - I truly couldn't care whether is a good or bad thing, but HN is for facts].
But did Israel give back "complete control of Gaza"? Here's another Wikipedia quote: "Israel maintains direct external control over Gaza and indirect control over life within Gaza: it controls Gaza's air and maritime space, and six of Gaza's seven land crossings. It reserves the right to enter Gaza at will with its military and maintains a no-go buffer zone within the Gaza territory. Gaza is dependent on Israel for its water, electricity, telecommunications, and other utilities." [1]
My own opinion on the matter is not contained within this post; just providing some more facts for the interested.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_Gaz... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip
As much as I disliked Trump and his actions in the area, at least he did something out of the ordinary that could have led to untying the mess. The latest "peace agreements" with Arab countries are probably a result of this and might lead to something in the future.
Unlike South Africa the level of religion extremism is too high on both sides to allow a peaceful resolution of the conflict.
It seems to be widely defined as the establishment and maintenance of an explicitly Jewish state.
Most Israel want the former. A hard core minority wants the latter. The last few decades the latter set the tone because the dovish side of the map hadn't propose a viable course of action to change the status quo. The moderate majority is too scared and it lost faith in trying to reach a peace agreement again after the violence the last try brought, And the "death to israel" rhetoric of palestinian leaders.
So while the majority is pretty moderate, the perceived lack of partner basically put in power an extreme right minority. This might change as there's an undercurrent of population change, where the new majority might be less preoccupied with western values of democracy and citizen rights.
Zionism might not be religious, but the political forces that would prevent relinquishing territories in modern day Israel very much are.
Gulf states are more worried about Iran's intransigence than they are about the rights of Palestinians and that's where we are today.
Trump is not here anymore, but I don't think his efforts actually made the situation harder to solve, this is a misconception, they did push the Palestinians to a corner and they lost some Arab support, but it could have led to new negotiations where the Palestinians are pushed by this reduced support and Israel is pushed by behind the scenes threats from Trump to lose support.
The Palestinians nothing more than a play tool for other Arab nations, not just the Gulf states. Even their close neighbors, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Egypt, are not big fans
Trump's 'big gamble' on N. Korea for example does not apply to Israel in that way.
If anything Trump would 'end' the situation by caving to pressure to declare the occupations 'legal territory of Israel' or something along those lines.
I don't think he remotely understands the history or cares, he'll take what some of his wealthy buddy 'advisers' tell him about it.
I believe he would do it in a heartbeat in exchange for guarantees for financing on construction of a few buildings in NYC and Tel Aviv.
He is as corrupt as he can be within the law, he will offer powerful people 'whatever' on a personal basis, in exchange for some personal gain be it populist or prospect of future deals.
FYI I don't think he had anything to gain on N. Korea but some kind of accolade, it's the only situation that didn't provide for considerably conflict of interest.
And yes, I agree that the Gulf States don't care that much about the Palestinians, but they do at least a little bit.
And this situation get to fester while corrupting both our people.
What is Israel doing better than pre apartheid South Africa? Or rather, what are the positive differences between the two regimes?
So Israel is (was) willing to give equal rights to any one who accepts jews place in israel.
The last few decades are begining to erode this willingness. And I fear we maybe slipping to full apartheid.
I also don't think this is a helpful way of phrasing your point that we should consider the downstream carrots and sticks of our positions.
I'm sorry it hurts your feelings but real people are losing their homes and livelihoods every day to ever increasing Israeli settlement.
The issue is the circumstances there don't meet the factual criterion of apartheid. That's not a question of feelings. The fact the apartheid label is applied here while it is not emphasized or even applied to non-Jewish countries is a double standard. That fits the definition of anti-semitism.
If I'm Palestinian, I live my life completely according to the rules of Israel (because of the blockade and checkpoints and control of the territory). As a Palestinian, I also cannot vote in Israel and will never be granted the ability to vote in Israel, in order to preserve the ethnic majority of Israel. As a Palestinian I can also have my home taken away from me to make room for Israeli settlers.
That's apartheid.
That is, literally and factually, not apartheid.
The point of calling Israel an apartheid state is of course not to claim that Israel is identical to what South Africa was. The point is to emphasize that it is the same racist and supremacist ideology that permeates both systems. In South Africa, you had white people (Boers) dominating and oppressing colored people. In Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, you have Jews dominating and oppressing Palestinians.
Israel denies citizenship, voting rights, and equal rights to Palestinians (who still have to live according to the law Israeli citizens decide because Israel controls their territory). And the entire basis for doing this is that Jewish people must be the ethnic majority in Israel. It's literally apartheid on ethnic lines.
It's not surprising that an internet forum thread about Israel turns into a political, etc., flamewar—that's unfortunately the expected outcome. The important question is how to develop a site culture where that's less likely to happen.
Said the Arabs in the West Bank?
We can't use the argument that 'Israel has a right to exist' (ok) to dismiss the illegality of the occupied territories (not ok).
Hezbollah exists for this historical reason. (Edit: people flinching at this comment, I meant to imply 'partly for this reason', i.e. in the context the overall conflict and brought them up because the article is about Lebanon. Of course Hezbollah is not primarily about Palestenians)
So yes 'let's make peace' but that would involve something like a two state solution or whatever.
I have a funny feeling that Israel is maybe paying for most of this cable, and that Greece is getting the added benefit of 'it's side' of Cypress getting a big win. Israel has a lot to gain from a geostrategic perspective from this whereas Cypress is too small and Greece doesn't have enough money for this to be a top line item.
Lebanon absolutely does not have the Palestinians rights in mind. They have "refugee camps" with tens of thousands of people in them that they have been kept there since the 1950's and 1960's, and haven't given them citizenship.
How come you're so concerned about other countries making peace with Israel, but not concerned with countries making peace with Lebanon?
I'm not concerned with any nation making peace with the next because mostly they have a pragmatic peace.
The 'concern' is the ongoing incursion into the occupied territories, against all international condemnation and the duplicity of US actions i.e. technically declaring the occupation illegal while literally at the same time moving embassies etc..
The legitimacy of the Jews right to a homeland and their problems derived from nearby enemies is constantly used as cover for their other actions.
Zionism is not supposed to be Apartheid, but in pragmatic reality, it is.
That there are not sanctions against Israel is a testament to it's far reaching influence.
Any rhetoric by Hezbollah leaders to the contrary is just that, plus an excuse to maintain relevance following Israel's withdrawal from South Lebanon. After all, why maintain an extra-legal paramilitary force after it has successfully achieved the goal it was created for?
That's true for the PLO, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc., but not Hezbollah, which responds to Israel’s periodic occupations of South Lebanon, not their occupation of Palestine.
The right of a homeland for the Palestinians has been recognized since before Israel was even granted statehood by the U.N as part of the two-state solution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-state_solution
The PA has been recognized since the Oslo accords in 1995.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_National_Authority
Hamas in the Gaza strip is not recognized by Israel and its allies, but Hamas does not recognize Israel's right to exist:
The goal is for both the Israeli and Palestinian states to exist and for there to be peace. An Israeli hegemony over the Palestinian state, with settlers and all, certainly doesn’t help that, and it may be a rational goal of the Palestinian state to become too much of a nuisance to be ignored. If peace means subjugation, I think many Palestinians probably wouldn’t be okay with that. The Palestinians are seeing a lot of “might makes right” arguments right now about why they should just accept subjugation.
For the Palestinians, perhaps reducing the Israeli would increase freedom in the short term. In the longer term, in the absence of Israel, it seems more likely they would end up dominated by either larger neighbors like Lebanon by Syria or experience low-freedom autocracies like Egypt, Iraq, etc.
And if one can understand why Israel would fight for its right to exist as a state, then why should it be surprising that the Palestinian state fights for the same reason?
Instead, the argument is that the observable fact is that continued violence has not helped the palestinian cause.
It simply has not worked.
That's not a moral statement. It is simply the descriptive truth that violence for decades has not helped their cause, and therefore it probably won't in the future.
Why do some Israelis build settlements? I mean, in the middle of what used to be Palestinian-controlled land? What's their goal? Also isn't it super risky/scary?
It seems to me to just be a needless provocation but that makes no sense, why would anyone risk their family's safety just to provoke? I'm clearly missing some key insight.
The land on the Palestinian side of that border are hills. Prior to when Israel conquered that land in 1967, Arab militants/terrorists would take pot shots at and occasionally kill drivers of cars and busses driving along roads in this region. It’s really that small, single digit miles wide. Apparently school busses were a favorite since they are large bright targets.
The settlements were originally limited in number and designed to offer the Israelis opportunity for physical security. This is still the case today when the preferred weapon of militants/terrorist is missiles.
After 1973 when the Right came to power the settlements adopted a religious connotation. They were massively expanded as a conscious effort to absorb the entire West Bank. Since then the problem has only deepened.
While many Israeli Jews (likely a majority) acknowledge that the West Bank is "occupied", technically, according to international law, for the above reasons, they insist that Israel has a legitimate claim to it. The West Bank is in Israel commonly referred to as "Judea and Samaria" because those are the names used in the Torah.
The goal of the settlements is to create "facts on the ground" to make it harder for future governments to relinquish the occupied Palestinian territories. As Israel's former prime minister Ariel Sharon phrased it: "Everybody has to move, run and grab as many [Palestinian] hilltops as they can to enlarge the [Jewish] settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them." This is precisely why it is considered a war crime for an occupying power to transfer parts of its civilian population into occupied territory.
Most Israeli settlers live in settlement blocs and it is not dangerous for the setters to live in them. A smaller number of settlers are religious extremists and they establish "outposts" - settlements built without explicit permission by the government. These settlers are often well-armed and coordinate with the Israeli military. Palestinians, on the other hand, are for the most part not allowed to own firearms.
This allowed Israeli extremists to take the reigns, and after three decades of hegemony managed to convince most of the Israeli population that peace is a dangerous pipe dream and any sort of compromise will be met with violence. And to establish facts on the ground which would make a palestinian state practically impossible without rooting out masses of Israelis from their home by force.
The Israeli left kept warning of this scenario, because the end game is either a non democratic jewish state, or a civil war torn single state. This cost the traditional Israeli left (the labor party) to be almost electorally eliminated during these 3 decades. Now the hegemony opinion is that no peace is possible, and the Palestinians are to be basically ignored.
The conflict will continue until one side realizes that it has been utterly defeated. This hasn't happened yet. They have been defeated. They just don't want to admit it.
I do really wish my people's country could come up in the news without people breaking out in Zionism Derangement Syndrome in the comments, insisting genocide refugees are colonizers and racism is when we don't force minorities to fight in the army if they don't support the state. It brings to mind that academic crank who once said Israeli soldiers are racist for not raping Palestinian women. This kind of ZDS is why Netanyahu keeps winning -- it's all Israelis and Jews hear from people in other countries, and it affects our discourse.
Which country actually initiates negotiations is not very interesting, if you can even accurately determine the "start" of any negotiation in this time of digital communications and backchannel diplomacy.
It would also be nice if Lebanon accepted the international community's ruling that yes, the 2000 Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon really happened, and there is in fact no remaining occupation of Lebanese land.
Regardless of whether the Shebaa Farms area is Syrian or Lebanese territory, it clearly isn't Israeli territory. https://pij.org/articles/9/understanding-the-shebaa-farms-di...
The CIA did a fake vaccination program to find Bin Laden. I'd probably look askance at offers of aid workers from a country I'm technically at war with.
Come on.
It's unlikely to be solved anytime soon.
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) [...] is an organization founded in 1964 with the purpose of the "liberation of Palestine" through armed struggle, with much of its violence aimed at Israeli civilians.
Before that it was vanilla antisemitism, pogroms and massacres organized by the local Muslims, no different than how it was done in other places in the Middle East (or other places in the world). Some even were Nazi sympathizers/collaborators, like the Mufti of Jerusalem [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Liberation_Organizat...
The "resistance" didn't start with the PLO. They are only the latest manifestation of a conflict going back centuries. It didn't start in 1948, or 1964, etc. It started long before that.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Hebron_massacre
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936%E2%80%931939_Arab_revolt_...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1517_Hebron_attacks
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hebron
ad nausem
Before 1964 it wasn't driven by a Palestinian national aspirations, it was driven by religious antisemitism/bigotry, and in a much lesser extent by pan-Arabism.
There were many massacres of the Jews (including of women and children) by the local Arabs. It wasn't something specific to Israel, it happened with many minorities all over the Middle East. My family has oral memories of one such massacre.
But I wouldn't call massacres of the civilian minority population - a "resistance".
Unfortunately, most of the people who've been tasked with bringing the "conflict" to an end cannot seem to fathom, or more importantly, actively choose to deny the existence of these prior elements. As they would completely undermine their (only) thesis.
Again, I hate giving Trump credit for stuff, but his approach of "lets make deals with parties willing to make deals, and ignore those who want to waste our time" has opened doors. It would be a tremendous shame if we walked backwards to the old (failed) peace processors viewpoint. With the current administration, I'd say that was inevitable.
Lebanon could benefit from this. So could the Pals. All they have to do is stop trying to kill Israelis and destroy Israel. I have little hope of this happening in my lifetime.
Israel has now begun to vaccinate Palestinian workers that commute from Gaza and the West Bank, and has also donated vaccines (despite the Palestinian government stating repeatedly they don’t want help from Israel) to Palestine.
Would any Jew in 1950 have willingly taken a German vaccine?
But Israel basically wanted the leadership to bend over further than they'd be willing to do, and the deal was cancelled.
Today with a more diverse Lebanon it's still possible. There would need to be a shift away from Syrian and Iranian interest but it is definitely possible.
This is like trying to go Manhattan from NJ without entering NY. I mean... it's impossible.
(Greek nationals doesn't seem to like this comment)
I mean, the dispute between Turkey and Greece mostly is about the islands that are literally 5 to 10kms away from Turkish mainland and Greece trying to claim the whole Aegan See for themselves, citing the islands are her waters and there a LOT of islands, enough to cover Aegean See and isolating Turkey’s west shores. It causes a dispute, since if Greece would have their way, Turkey would not even be able to use her west shores.
Greece invading west Turkey in WW1 does not help either.
The conflicts are really feels like children arguing with each other. Both parties needs to stop, but I think both governments/ruling parties enjoy nationalist votes from fueling this dispute. Other countries, who have interest in this dispute, does not help either.
It's all a bit of a clusterfuck, I'm not even entirely clear on what areas Turkey claims and what areas Greece claims. Turkey also refuses to go to the ICJ to resolve this, which would have been a good solution, in my opinion.
[1]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03526/Turkey_...
It would give the both access to undersea hydrocarbon deposits, and Israel was going to support route changes of pipelines to pass more through Turkey.
I suspect this project and goal is somehow intertwined, but I'm not versed enough with international relations to see the big picture.
The video you talk about is probably talking about a proposal that Turkey made to Israel which runs counter to every international maritime law (it was promptly rejected by israel) . AFAIK they made similar proposals to egypt
Yes, they also seem to have bribed foreignpolicy.com [1] to slander the peace-keeping efforts of Turkey in the region.
[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/08/turkey-military-overstr...
The point is that as long as Turkey is opportunistically involved in every military conflict they believe they can get gains from, they can't be seen as a trusted partner by their neighboring countries.
But, you find all those countries that I listed above, “trustworthy”, is that correct?
The problem here is, “trustworthy” does not mean anything in international relations. It is all about having the outcomes you want, one way or another. If peace gets you what you want, its great. If war, then you go to war.
That is why European Union removed the borders, unified the economic area, so that they will be too integrated/extremely hard to decouple to have war again, because treaties or trustworthiness is meaningless in scale of countries.
Turkey has not yet withdrawn from what is legally Cypriot territory on the north of the island. That would be the bare minimum of cooperation required.
(No connection to Greece myself)
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/enlargement/briefings/1a2_en....
reality is turks are often... detach from reality politically. such is life in 2nd world countries like lebanon, turkey, malaya, indonesia etc