What’s Makes an Outpost Illegal?

by Jonathan S. Tobin


For years, Israel’s critics have been railing against the construction of illegal outposts by Jews in the West Bank. The hilltop enclaves are erected without government permits and are therefore illegal, but the settlers have often been able to win delays from sympathetic politicians or to otherwise tie up their status in court. This is seen as a failure of the rule of law in Israel but the Palestinians have apparently been taking notes from the settlers’ tactics. Today a group of Palestinians erected a tent city in the controversial E1 area just outside Jerusalem protesting plans to incorporate the area into the city and the Jewish state. Police told them they would eventually be evicted, but those involved say they are on Arab-owned land and intend to stay until their camp is incorporated into a independent Palestinian state rather than Israel.

This is an effective tactic, but at the heart of their stunt is a concept that doesn’t necessarily work in favor of their cause. If, as their sympathizers will argue, Palestinians have the right to live and/or build on Arab-owned land anywhere in the country, then why shouldn’t Jews, who want to do the same thing, have that same right? In other words, is an outpost only truly illegal, not because of the lack of government building permits, but because the residents of the tent are Jewish rather than Arab?


According to those Palestinians interviewed by the New York Times, there is a distinction between their outpost and Jewish ones. It is that they think that only they have a right to live there and that Jews are foreign invaders. But the area involved is one in which both peoples have claims. Those of the Jews are backed by the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine as well as by history. Moreover, Israeli settlements are almost all on land that is not owned by individual Arabs. The point is, if the Arab tent city in E1 can be justified, so, too, most Jewish hilltop settlements as well as others that have been built with permission.

Those who oppose the Jewish presence in the West Bank or parts of Jerusalem often argue that incorporating these areas makes a two-state solution to the conflict impossible or undermine Israel’s future as a Jewish state. But the E1 area is not some remote hilltop outpost deep in the West Bank that would likely be given up in the event of a peace accord. It is a close Jerusalem suburb that would be incorporated into Israel in any treaty under the concept of land swaps that even President Obama supports. Should the Palestinians ever decide to make peace and accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state next door, having the E1 area under Israeli control won’t prevent them from creating an independent nation next to it. 

While Israel’s critics complain about Jews building in the West Bank and Jerusalem, the Palestinians are building there all the time. But by choosing to seize an area that is in between two large Jewish areas, they are, in fact, the ones complicating any possible two-state scheme. Their true goal is not really to create a new Arab town but to ultimately evict Jews from their homes in Maale Adumim next door.

The notion that Arabs can live anywhere in the West Bank or Jerusalem but that Jews may not is a recipe for unending conflict, not peace. Peace will only come when Palestinians reconcile themselves to the existence of Israel. But such a peace isn’t likely to last if a Palestinian state remains off limits to Jews. 


Jonathan S. Tobin

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/01/11/whats-makes-an-outpost-illegal-west-bank-israel-palestinians/

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Hagel Could Change the Strategic Calculus for Israel and Iran

by Max Boot


In Chuck Hagel, President Obama is appointing a vociferous and public opponent of any military strike to stop the Iranian nuclear program–whether by the U.S. or Israel. For instance in 2006 he said, “I would say that a military strike against Iran, a military option, is not a viable, feasible, responsible option. I believe a political settlement will be the answer. Not a military settlement.” Just last year he said: “There will be a lot of killing. These things start and you can’t control. They escalate. They always do and they always will.”

Contrary to what he said, a strike on Iran is indeed a “feasible” option (it could be carried out successfully either by the U.S. Air Force and Navy or by the Israeli Air Force), but in one sense he is right–both the U.S. and Israel need to think carefully about all the ramifications of a military strike on Iran are and act only if there is no chance of stopping the Iranian nuclear program by peaceful means. But here’s the problem: The only way to stop the Iranian program by peaceful means is to act as if you’re ready to go to war. Only then is there any chance of the mullahs giving up their nuclear-bomb project. This is in many ways similar to the paradoxical logic of deterrence during the Cold War–only by showing an absolute willingness and ability to wage nuclear wage could the U.S. prevent a nuclear war from breaking out.

But if Hagel is confirmed as secretary of defense, this will be a signal to the entire region that the U.S. is not serious about doing whatever it takes to stop an Iranian nuke, thereby making war more likely by forcing Israel into a unilateral strike.

That signal is already being sent. Witness, for example, this Al Arabiya article: “Hagel to rein in Israel on Iran strike: commentators.” That very perception will not only embolden the mullahs to avoid serious negotiations; it could also force Israel to act on its own.

Both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are known to view Iran as an existential threat to the Jewish state and they have made clear many times their willingness to attack the Iranian program to prevent its completion. This is not a bluff on their part. They have not acted, however, in part because they could not convince the rest of the security cabinet and Israel’s security chiefs–the heads of the armed forces and the intelligence agencies–that there was no option but to launch a unilateral strike. Skeptics of an attack on Iran within the Israeli security establishment have argued that Israel should exhaust every remedy and act only in concert with the U.S. They have buttressed their position by pointing to all of the tough sanctions the U.S. and its allies were imposing on Iran and by citing the tough statements President Obama has made. For instance, in the third presidential debate last fall, Obama said: “As long as I’m president of the United States Iran will not get a nuclear weapon.”

But, whatever Obama’s publicly stated views, Hagel has made clear that he views bombing Iran as a bigger threat than Iran getting the bomb. If he takes office, that will send a very dangerous signal that the U.S. is not serious about doing whatever it takes to stop the Iranian nuclear program. At that point the balance of opinion within the Israeli security establishment could very well shift in favor of a unilateral strike. And if a strike were to occur, Iran could very well retaliate not only against Israel but also against U.S. forces in the region and our Arab allies. In other words, if the Senate confirms Hagel, absent a convincing transformation in his views, it would be making more likely precisely the war that he (and everyone else) would like to avoid.


Max Boot

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/01/13/hagel-could-change-the-strategic-calculus-for-israel-and-iran/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Palestinian State will Bring Demographic Problem

by IMRA


The following is IMRA's English translation of a message being distributed by Dr. Guy Bachor:

It is important to read assimilate and transfer to your contacts.

Mahmoud Abbas demands of the world allow him to "shelter" the "Palestinian refugees from Syria" within the Palestinian Authority.

How many Syrians of Palestinian origin are there?

About 400,000. Of course we will stop it, but imagine if it would be a real country, with freedom of entry into its borders?

It would immediately bring in the Palestinians from Syria, and another 700,000 from Lebanon, and this would change the demographic reality in Israel - forever.

We are talking about, among other things, the world's most dangerous militias, gangs and Salafist terrorist organizations coming here with weapons, sitting by the coast and Ben Gurion Airport, such that we would no longer be able to live in Israel.

The amazing thing is that there are those who actually use the demographic argument to justify a Palestinian state, while if that happens, demographic realities will become unbearable for every Israeli.

After all, history teaches that the Jews do not read the warning signs in time, even when they are smeared all over the wall in front of them; and it is still said that the Jews are a smart People.

If you share this post 1000 times, Israel will begin to understand.  It's up to you.


IMRA

Source: www.imra.org.il

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Chuck Hagel Joins the Palestine Firsters

by Yoram Ettinger


"Israel Hayom", ow.ly/1R1EEk , January 11, 2013

Chuck Hagel established himself as a Palestine Firster on October 27, 2009, speaking at “J Street’s” 1st national conference: “The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is central, not peripheral, to US vital security interests in combating terrorism, preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon, stability in the Middle East and US and global energy security.”

Really?!

In contrast with the worldview of Hagel and other Palestine Firsters, none of the tectonic developments on the stormy Arab Street derives from the Palestinian issue, the Arab-Israeli conflict or Israel’s policies or existence.

For instance, Iran is developing nuclear capabilities in order to intimidate the US into a diminished global and regional power-projection, which would facilitate the alteration of the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean into an Iranian basin. Egypt has shifted from a pro-US military dictatorship to an increasingly anti-US, pro-Iran Islamic despotism, dominated by the transnational Muslim Brotherhood, which aspires to spread its own version of Islam in the Muslim world and beyond. Iraq aligns itself with Iran, serving as the most critical route of military and civilian supplies to the Assad regime, while disintegrating into Shite, Sunni and Kurdish sections, constituting an arena for domestic and regional terrorism.  Libya has switched from a decreasingly anti-US Qaddafi dictatorship to a tumultuous break-up along tribal, ethnic, geographic, ideological and religious lines, replete with increasingly anti-US Islamic-driven terrorism.  In Yemen, the departure of the relatively-stable tyrant, Ali Abdullah Saleh, paved the road to further disintegration and intensified terrorism, targeting domestic leaders, the Saudi regime and other US interests. Syria has been violently split into rival fiefdoms with over 50,000 fatalities since March 2011, serving as a battleground for domestic, intra-Muslim, intra-Arab and global rivalries.

Irrespective of the Palestinian issue, Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon and Algeria experience boiling seismic undercurrents, exacerbating the 1,400 year old intra-Muslim instability, unpredictability and violence, as well as anti-US sentiments.

Moreover, the Palestinian issue is not the crown-jewel of Arab policy-makers.  For example, all Arab League Foreign Ministers were supposed to visit the Palestinian Authority (PA) to celebrate the November, 2012 UN vote for Palestinian non-member statehood.  However, only the Egyptian Foreign Minister and the Arab League Secretary General arrived. A March, 2012 Arab League Summit committed $100MN to the PA; nothing has been delivered.  Arab leaders have repeatedly reneged on their financial pledges to the PA, marshaling their rhetoric, but not their blood or funds, on behalf of Palestinians.  Thus, the October, 2010 Arab Summit pledged $500 million to the Palestinian; only 7% was delivered. Arab nations pledged more than $2 billion in support of the first and second Palestinian Intifada against Israel; less than $500 million reached the Palestinians. The October, 2000 Arab Summit committed itself to $1 billion in aid to the PLO, but delivered only $200 million. During the 1980s, Arab financial support of the PLO was less than 10% of the Arab financial support of the anti-Soviet Muslims in Afghanistan. No Arab support was accorded to the Palestinians during the 1982 Israel-PLO war in Lebanon, or during the recent Israeli operations against Palestinian terrorism in Judea and Samaria (“Operation Defensive Shield”) and Gaza (“Operation Cast Lead” and “Operation Pillar of Defense”). Arab governments provide dramatically less financial assistance to the PA and UNRWA than the US or Europe.The Red Carpet, which welcomes Palestinian leaders in the West, is transformed into a shabby rug upon landing in Arab capitals. What do Arab regimes know about the Palestinian issue that Western policy makers fail to comprehend?!

In contrast to the Palestine Firsters, Arab societies minimize assistance to Palestinians, as evidenced in the reluctance of Jordan – as well as Lebanon and Egypt - to absorb Palestinian refugees from Syria, while welcoming over 100,000 Syrian refugees. Jordan and other Arab countries are aware of thesubversive and corrupt Palestinian track record.  Currently, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorizes Syrians on behalf of Assad.  In 2007, the Palestinian Fatah al-Islam assaulted Lebanese officials and soldiers.  In 1991 and 2003, Palestinians fought alongside Saddam Hussein.  In 1990, Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas collaborated with Iraq’s plunder and destruction of Kuwait, which provided a home to 300,000 Palestinians.  During the 1970s and 1980s, Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas fueled Lebanon’s civil wars. In 1970, Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas terrorized Jordan, attempting to topple King Hussein, who had hosted them since 1968. During the 1950s they led the Palestinian cell of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo, and were forced for flee for subversion. Palestinian subversion triggered Arab retaliation, which produced more Palestinians killed, arrested and expelled by Arabs than by Israel.

The dwindling club of pro-US Arab leaders are currently traumatized by the lethal Iranian nuclear threat, the raging Arab Winter, emboldened Islamic terrorism and the potentially erupting Iraqi, Syrian and Muslim Brotherhood lava, which may consume Jordan, Morocco and the Gulf States.

However, while the Middle East is burning - irrespective of the Palestinian issue - Chuck Hagel and the Palestine Firsters are playing the Palestinian fiddle, sacrificing and inflaming Middle East reality on the altar of oversimplification and wishful-thinking.  


Yoram Ettinger

Source: http://www.theettingerreport.com/OpEd/OpEd---Israel-Hayom/Chuck-Hagel-Joins-the-Palestine-Firsters.aspx?clientcache=0

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A Dying Breed

by Dror Eydar

For years now, Channel 2's Friday night news panel "Ulpan Shishi" (Friday studio) has served as a nature reserve for a dying breed on Israel's political map — a breed that dominates Israel's radio and television stations (as well as Yedioth Ahronoth and Haaretz). This past Friday, two fascinating representatives of this breed joined the tribe: Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert — who crossed political lines and converted his faith in exchange for the questionable honor of speaking at the Saban Forum — and tribe elder Amnon Abramovich, a veteran Channel 2 commentator. 

Neither one of them is in favor of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, and neither one of them likes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Both of them have a bad habit of conceding important territories in exchange for dubious peace deals. They both think that in the scandal surrounding the forged Harpaz document (which involved a bitter rivalry between then-IDF Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. (res.) Gabi Ashkenazi and Defense Minister Ehud Barak) the bad guy is Barak, and not the military personnel whose conduct in defiance of elected government officials was unacceptable. 

Both of them being strongly affiliated with Yedioth Ahronoth, they also don't like Israel Hayom. Israel Hayom changed the rules of the game on them, you know. Until we came along, the dying breed tribe kept a stranglehold on all of our privates by way of Yedioth Ahronoth publisher Arnon (Noni) Mozes' empire. That is where they marked the true enemies: Settlers, religious Israelis, ultra-Orthodox Israelis, Likud and other such demons – the ones who stood in the way of their efforts to brainwash the public with delusions of false diplomacy. These delusions still exist in full force at the President's Residence, in Yedioth Ahronoth's headlines and on the Channel 2 news. 

What did Channel 2's interview with Olmert teach us that we didn't already know? First off, we heard Olmert talk about "foreign money" and "corruption" while wearing a righteous expression – that was entertaining, especially coming from a man who was convicted of breach of trust and was charged in four different corruption cases. Other than that, not much. He preached to the public to vote for Kadima Chairman Shaul Mofaz (sure, we're all running to vote for him); he voiced support for recent remarks by former Israel Security Agency chief Yuval Diskin against Netanyahu and Barak, published in Yedioth Ahronoth (like he would ever go against Yedioth Ahronoth); he repeated remarks made by President Shimon Peres and Hatnuah Chairwoman Tzipi Livni and other left-wing figures, which boiled down to fear mongering and more fear mongering. All this man, who once led the country, has left to say is this: A forecast of another intifada unless peace talks are resumed (indirectly legitimizing terror), warnings of global isolation and promoting American sanctions against Israel over "the Israeli government's and Netanyahu's provocative, confrontational policy of defiance against the world." 

It can drive a person crazy to look at this reckless group that has been stringing us along for 20 years with empty slogans of peace and reconciliation and diplomatic arrangements and other such sweets that earn them international honors but have so far yielded five wars, thousands of dead, countless suicide attacks, tens of thousands of Qassam rockets and an Iranian outpost in Gaza. All this while we seek peace and get nothing but war and the world — how surprising — sides with the Palestinians. Does the world have a choice? Even Olmert and Peres side with the Palestinians and claim that Israel is at fault. The world media can also quote Abramovich's clever quip about how Netanyahu "is pulling one over on the entire Western world." This sums up how the Israeli Left feels about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: We are the problem. Just like with Pharaoh only in reverse: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is righteous, and my people and I are the evil ones. 

But Olmert was there, and he offered Abbas more concessions than any previous Israeli leader. He offered far too much: To divide Jerusalem, to place holy sites under international supervision, to withdraw from nearly 100% of territories, to recognize the suffering of the Palestinian people, to partially allow Palestinian right of return, and more. When speaking to Ulpan Shishi on Friday he said that "a lot has come out of [this offer], and it is possible that if [I had offered] just a little bit more, we could have achieved peace." 

Here is the truth that was revealed by Wikileaks through Al-Jazeera, and ran in Israel Hayom as part of research conducted by Boaz Kantor: The chief Palestinian peace negotiator at the time, Saeb Erekat, told his team to reply to Olmert's offer in one of three possible ways: Make a "counterproposal" involving a map that "would be shown but not given"; give "an ambiguous answer that doesn't actually answer"; or an "outright no.”

Erekat instructed his team to devise another response that would meet the following conditions: “(a) we are not blamed, (b) negotiations are uninterrupted, and (c) no submission is made that we cannot retract.” Maybe someone should notify Olmert of the Palestinians' real reaction to his offer. While they're at it, someone should tell Shimon I've-known-Abbas-for-30-years Peres that his so-called partner for peace is laughing at all of our expense. 

In the interview, Olmert also hinted that the outgoing government unnecessarily spent billions of shekels on the Iranian nuclear issue, or "adventurous delusions that never materialize," as he put it. This from a man who went to war "hastily and without thoroughly investigating the battleground… without a well-formulated plan and without a clear strategic outline…without ensuring that the army was prepared… all these led to a massive failure having to do with exercising judgment, responsibility and caution" (taken from the Winograd report, issued by the committee that investigated the Second Lebanon War). 

Olmert concluded the interview by calling for the diplomatic process to become a priority, saying "I hope very much that the Israeli public will display the necessary responsibility and act accordingly." Exactly. Let's hope that this election will leave the Oslo gang and its delusional supporters where they belong: in History's dustbin.

Dror Eydar

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=3232

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Ya'alon: No Place for Palestinian State Alongside Israel Now

by Nitzi Yakov and Daniel Siryoti

Vice PM Moshe Ya'alon: "Let’s instead talk about a path that we must follow, and that path is construction. We need to invest in education, infrastructure, settlement, science, and technology. This is the real hope. There is no partner for an agreement.”

Vice Prime Minister Moshe (Bogie) Ya'alon says that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas shares the same goals as Hamas. Photo credit: Yoav Ari Dudkevitch

There is no place for a Palestinian state alongside Israel at the current time, Vice Prime Minister and Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe (Bogie) Ya'alon said on Saturday. Ya'alon is largely thought to be first in line to be appointed defense minister in the new government after the January 22 elections.

"The person who is refusing to come to the negotiating table is [Palestinian Authority President] Mahmoud Abbas," Ya'alon said at a cultural event in central Israel on Saturday. "The goals of Abbas are the same as the goals of Hamas."

"As far as I’m concerned, there is an entity in Gaza that can call itself the United Islamic Republic and the Palestinian Authority can call itself the Palestinian Empire," Ya'alon said, referring to the Palestinian Authority's recent re-branding of itself as the "State of Palestine."

In an exclusive interview with Israel Hayom on Friday, Ya'alon said that Abbas was not a partner for peace because "he has never said that the occupation began in 1967. Instead, he insists that the occupation is 64 years old. This is hope? No, this is a delusion.”

“Stop talking about a solution,” Ya'alon said. “Let’s instead talk about a path that we must follow, and that path is construction. We need to invest in education, infrastructure, settlement, science, and technology. This is the real hope. There is no partner for an agreement.”

The Palestinian Authority harshly condemned Ya'alon's statements.

"These are grave threats against Abbas, which are identical to the threats the Israeli government made against Yasser Arafat," senior Palestinian Authority official Saeb Erekat said. 

Erekat asserted that Israel's goal was to undermine the public image of Abbas.

"Israel's claims sound like a broken record," Erekat said. "President Abbas adheres to international law and Israel's threats do not frighten us." 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced his lack of confidence in Abbas as a peace partner last Thursday as Abbas met with Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal in Cairo as part of a reconciliation effort between Abbas' Fatah and Hamas, mediated by Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi.

"Abbas embraces the head of a terrorist organization that declared just one month ago that Israel needs to be wiped off the map," Netanyahu said. "That is not how someone with their eyes toward peace behaves."

Nitzi Yakov and Daniel Siryoti

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=7039

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Egypt: Ex-Brotherhood Members to Launch New Organization

by Mahmud El Shafey


London, Asharq Al-Awsat - A number of former Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Egypt, who have defected from the group, have announced the beginning of procedures to establish a new Dawa [outreach]  organization to compensate for the Brotherhood’s neglect of Islamic advocacy due to their involvement in politics.


In a statement to Asharq Al-Awsat yesterday, Sheikh Dr. Kamal Helbawy, a former spokesman for the “Muslim Brotherhood in the West” and Secretary General of the Islamic Unity Forum, said that a number of dissident leaders have held intensive meetings to agree on the establishment of the group, and have settled on the name “Rehabilitation, Construction and Development”. He pointed out that among the leaders of the new organization is Dr. Mohammed Habib, a former Deputy General Guide, along with the dissident Brotherhood leader Mukhtar Noah and the UN war crimes expert Mahmoud Bassiouni. Dr. Helbawy denied that Dr. Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh had been listed as a member of the new organization in order to give it weight on the Egyptian street in the face of what he called “political conflicts with the Brotherhood”, because he is too busy heading the “Strong Egypt Party”. Dr. Helbawy confirmed that the new organization will be financed through membership subscriptions and contributions from those enthusiastic about the idea, and that it would be public and accessible to all.

Dr. Helbawy confirmed that the trend of Islamist groups and movements heading in the direction of politics, and his and other Brotherhood leaders’ concern for Dawa work, were the reasons behind the establishment of this organization, seeking to restore the Dawa role to prominence.

Dr. Helbawy said that the Muslim Brotherhood has been preoccupied with politics and forgotten its commitment to Dawa, pointing out that the new organization “will be tasked with Dawa, Islam and education, and will not interfere in politics”. He called on President Mohammed Mursi to be the president of all Egyptians, not just one group. He clarified that the new organization “will not be parallel to the Brotherhood and will be concerned only with Dawa affairs and religious issues that have been neglected at the expense of politics". He added that the organization will not be limited to a single approach; rather it will adopt its methods based on a variety of Islamic sources, whilst maintaining that each member of the new organization has the right to join any party. Dr. Helbawy concluded by saying that the “Rehabilitation, Construction and Development” publicity drive will end soon, so that real work can begin.



Mahmud El Shafey

Source: http://www.asharq-e.com/news.asp?section=1&id=32540

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A Nation Once Again?

by Jonathan Spyer

Kurds gain from regional tectonic shift in northeast Syria following the Assad regime’s retreat back to Damascus.

In Syria, the Assad regime’s retreat back to Damascus and the Alawi heartlands in the west of the country has made possible the emergence of a Kurdish autonomous area in the country’s northeast.This area shares a border with Kurdish- controlled northern Iraq. As a result, a contiguous area of Kurdish control, stretching along the southern border of Turkey, has come into being.

  This emergent reality is raising again a question long dismissed from serious strategic discussion: namely, that of the establishment of a Kurdish state.
However, the obstacles on the path to Kurdish sovereignty remain formidable, and the geo-politics of the situation are fraught and complex.

The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq, led by Massoud Barzani, possesses its own armed forces, political system, capacity for oil production, public services and Kurdish-language education system and media. Its capital, Erbil, has the feel of a boomtown, with construction cranes along the skyline and new malls and hotels emerging from the dust.

The quasi-independence of northern Iraq is leading to increasing tensions with the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad. In the course of the last year, the autonomous Kurdish region cut off oil deliveries to the center of the country in a dispute over payment. The KRG’s providing of refuge to a fugitive former Iraqi vice president, Tariq Hashimi, also raised Baghdad’s hackles.

The KRG’s efforts to boost its oil production capacity and infrastructure are viewed with suspicion in Baghdad, which sees these as a possible prelude to a bid for independence.

The latent tensions came to a head in November, with clashes between the Iraqi army and the KRG’s Pesh Merga forces along the poorly demarcated line dividing the Kurdish autonomous zone from Iraq. The two forces remain deployed in large numbers on either side of the “border.”

In October 2011, the KRG signed a contract with US oil giant Exxon-Mobil for exploration of areas on the southernmost tip of the KRG area. The Baghdad government has made clear that it considers such deals to be illegal and that Exxon-Mobil will be making a “grave mistake” if it begins the exploration next year, as scheduled.

The dispute remains unresolved. Yet the KRG is finding an unlikely ally in its face-off with the authorities in Baghdad.

That ally is Turkey. Ankara needs a source of crude oil. The Erdogan government is worried at the Shi’a Maliki government’s Baghdad’s increasing closeness to Tehran. The KRG offers a potential alternative source. In the course of 2012, Erbil announced the signing of a deal with Ankara for the construction of a new cross-border crude oil pipeline (which would rival the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline, under the Baghdad government’s control). Oil consignments are also making their way in trucks across the border.

Ankara, which once viewed the development of a Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq with extreme suspicion, now appears to see Erbil as a possible ally against Baghdad and Tehran.

But at the same time, Turkey has signally failed to develop any coherent policy able to satisfy the aspirations of its own 18 million-19 million-strong Kurdish minority. Instead, Ankara remains committed to a brutal counter-insurgency against the PKK guerrilla movement, which is demanding autonomy for the Kurdish majority areas of southeastern Turkey. More than 700 people died this year in the fight between the PKK and the Turkish armed forces.

The main headquarters of the PKK, meanwhile, are in the Qandil mountains area of northern Iraq, adjoining the border with Turkey. There is no love lost between the PKK and the Barzani government in Erbil. But the KRG draws the line before taking aggressive steps against the PKK militants in Qandil. So while Ankara, for its own reasons, is now a near-ally of the Kurds of northern Iraq, it remains opposed to the aspirations of its own Kurdish population.

This picture is further complicated by the situation in Syria. There, the de facto autonomous Kurdish region is dominated by the Kurdish Democratic Union (PYD), which is the Syrian franchise of the PKK. This situation derives from the reality of PYD strength on the ground. But it has also been uneasily accepted by Barzani and the KRG and their local allies. The result is that these forces are today nominally in alliance in the Kurdish area.

With the Assad regime looking increasingly beleaguered further south, it is possible that this Kurdish unity may shortly be subjected to a harsh test, as it seeks to secure its future against a resurgent Sunni Arab, Islamist (and Turkish-supported) attempt to maintain a unitary Syria.

So an autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq has built close relations with Ankara on the basis of shared interests. But this region harbors Kurdish rebels seeking autonomy and rights in a struggle against Turkey.

At the same time, the rulers of this Kurdish region and the anti-Turkish Kurdish rebels are in alliance in a third country – Syria – where they may shortly be defending themselves against a Turkish-supported attempt to reunify Syria.

All this means that while the Kurds have made real and impressive gains over the last year, an imminent bid for statehood remains unlikely. The Kurds have one of the most obviously deserving of causes on an ethical level. In northern Iraq, they have laid much of the basis for sovereignty.

But they still lack a unified national movement.

And they are faced by a tangle of rival interests – in Baghdad, Ankara and Syria, not to mention Tehran – which each have a reason for opposing the emergence of full Kurdish sovereignty. So the odds remain steep.

The Kurds may console themselves, of course, by noting that the Middle East and the wider world today boast a number of examples of partially sovereign quasi-states, which lack full sovereignty but seem fairly durable nonetheless.

The Hamas entity in Gaza is one such example; Hezbollah-dominated south and east Lebanon (at least before May 2008) another. The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank offers a third variant, and the Syrian Alawis may be in the process of carving out a fourth.

It may be the fate of the Kurds in the period ahead to carve out a similar such space, albeit with vastly more historical grounding on its side than any of these other examples.

Although they do not have a state just yet, the Kurds have already established themselves as among the unexpected winners in the tectonic shift currently under way in the Middle East.

This article originally appeared on The Jerusalem Post.

Jonathan Spyer

Source:

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In Kandahar, Afghan Clerics Issue Fatwa Against Taliban Suicide Bombings

by MEMRI

On December 26, 2012, Afghan clerics held a conference in Kandahar city where they issued a fatwa against suicide bombings being carried out by Taliban militants across Afghanistan. The clerics called on Afghan youth to reject suicide bombings. The conference was attended by a number of Islamic scholars and Sufi mystics. The Kandahar Governor's Media Office issued a statement regarding the fatwa. Following is the text of the press statement, translated from the Pashtu version: "Kandahar Ulema Shura Islam Terms Suicide [Attacks] As Haram "December 27, 2012 "Kandahar, Afghanistan: Issuing a comprehensive fatwa [against suicide attacks], the Ulema Shura of Kandahar province yesterday termed suicide attacks contrary to the faith of Islam and strongly condemned these attacks. "A large meeting was organized in the Ulema Shura [office in Kandahar] yesterday. Besides scholars of Kandahar City, Ulema from the districts and surrounding provinces were also invited to the meeting. All attending agreed that the sacred faith of Islam and the Koran considers suicide haram [forbidden] and strictly prohibits Muslims from this act. "Qari Bashir Ahmad, acting chief of Kandahar Ulema and Mystics, said [on the occasion] that Allah has barred human beings from killing themselves as well as other people, and orders strict punishment for those who do so. 'Allah Has declared the killing of a single human as the killing of entire humanity. So, a human being must avoid this practice and prove to be a real Muslim,' he stated. "He strongly condemned the death of innocent people in the recent suicide attacks and termed them against the faith, the religion, and the culture, and against Islamic and human manners. Qari Bashir urged the Afghans, especially those who maintain a distance and are being used by the opposition groups [i.e. militants] in suicide attacks, to deeply study the faith of Islam and to stop this useless practice. "Other religious scholars also termed suicide attacks haram in light of the Koran and Hadith [sayings and deeds of Prophet Muhammad], and challenged the Ulema of the world who advocate these attacks." Source: A copy of the press statement was released to all journalists and is available upon request.

MEMRI

Source: http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/6928.htm

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Israeli Voters Turn Right with a new Political Star

by Leo Rennert

There's a fresh face among traditional politicians vying for votes in Israel's Jan. 22 elections -- an observant Jew, who's a former officer in an IDF elite commando unit and also made millions as a high-tech entrepreneur. His name is Naftali Bennett, and his Jewish Home party has risen to third place in the latest polls -- behind Prime Minister Netanyahu's Likud leading alliance with another rightist partner, Israel Our Home, and the runner-up Labor Party.

Why the sudden emergence of another right-wing party, this one led by Bennett? Aren't Israeli conservatives, nationalists and hawks already well represented without Bennett intruding on traditional turfs? Not really. 

What makes Bennett special and unique is that he has sounded with great clarity the death-knell of the two-state solution. He makes no bones about turning his back on a two-state bromide that has run into growing popular disenchantment and wariness about Palestinian statehood as an integral part of ending the conflict.

Bennett instead would annex 60 percent of the West Bank, an area currently under full Israeli control, and leave the rest for some form of Palestinian self-rule short of statehood.

Western media have started to report about the Bennett phenomenon, but they tend to attribute it to some general rightward trend, without fully probing its actual causes. Witness, for example, the Washington Post's Joel Greenberg, who dwells on Bennett's youth, charisma and appeal across traditional divides, while paying insufficient attention to existential security worries of Israeli voters that resonate with Bennett on the ballot ("Message of unity, land annexation lifts Israeli party -- Jewish Home's Naftali Bennett siphons support from Netanyahu," Jan. 13, page A12).

The motive elements behind Bennett's rise actually can be summed up in four words -- Lebanon, Gaza, Arafat, Abbas.

When Israelis withdrew from Lebanon expecting peace across the official UN-recognized border, they instead got Hezbollah with an arsenal of tens of thousands of rockets.

When Israelis completely evacuated Gaza, they hoped this Palestinian enclave might blossom into a thriving Singapore. Instead, Gaza became a Hamas launch pad for tens of thousands of rockets fired at civilian targets in Israel. Recently, Iranian-supplied advanced rockets demonstrated terrorist fire from Gaza could reach the heart of the Jewish state -- as far as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Israel's electorate also has painful memories of putting Palestinians under increasing self-rule with the 1993 Oslo accords and offering Yasser Arafat a Palestinian state on all of Gaza, 95 percent of the West Bank and a division of Jerusalem, only to be rewarded with an Arafat-orchestrated terror war that killed more than a thousand Israeli civilians.

And more recently, there are Israel's sour experiences with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, who like Arafat rejected an even more generous statehood offer -- with Jerusalem's Christian, Muslim, and Jewish religious shrines shorn from Israel's capital and placed under an international consortium run by Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the U.S., Palestine, and Israel. To top it offer, Abbas has abandoned all pretense of willingness to negotiate a two-state solution and instead has launched a full-scale propaganda campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state. All this, and Abbas's glorification of terrorist killers and his latest affront -- a glowing eulogy of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the notorious Arab collaborator in Adolf Hitler's Final Solution.

Given this context for Israel's Jan. 22 balloting, it should come as no surprise that a growing number of Israelis view a two-state solution -- still part of Netanyahu's platform -- as a bitter joke and are inclined to reward Bennett for offering a more clear-eyed security vision for the Jewish state.

Palestinian actions spawned the Bennett phenomenon. It will take a Palestinian Nelson Mandela to defuse it.

Leo Rennert is a former White House correspondent and Washington bureau chief of McClatchy Newspapers

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/01/israeli_voters_turn_right_with_a_new_political_star.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.