Saudi Arabia and Iran Make Quiet Openings to Head Off War
After years of growing hostility and competition for influence, Saudi Arabia and Iran have taken steps toward indirect talks to try to reduce the tensions that have brought the Middle East to the brink of war, according to officials from several countries involved in the efforts.
Even the prospect of such talks represents a remarkable turnaround, coming only a few weeks after a coordinated attack on Saudi oil installations led to bellicose threats in the Persian Gulf. Any reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran could have far-reaching consequences for conflicts across the region.
It was President Trump’s refusal to retaliate against Iran for the Sept. 14 attack, analysts say, that set off unintended consequences, prompting Saudi Arabia to seek its own solution to the conflict. That solution, in turn, could subvert Mr. Trump’s effort to build an Arab alliance to isolate Iran.
In recent weeks, officials of Iraq and Pakistan said, the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, asked the leaders of those two countries to speak with their Iranian counterparts about de-escalation.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/04/worl ... 3053091005
THE MIDDLE EAST
Trump and Tehran Shake Up the Middle East
Iran’s airstrike on Saudi oil sites exposed vulnerabilities around the region.
Excerpt:
If you think Trump’s withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria will make the Middle East more explosive, you’re correct. But there’s far more going on. Those troops were also interrupting Iran’s efforts to build a land bridge from Tehran to Beirut to tighten a noose around Israel — and their removal could help bring the Iran-Israel shadow war out into the open. This is the really big story in the Middle East today.
Here’s the background: In the early hours of Sept. 14, the Iranian Air Force launched roughly 20 drones and cruise missiles at one of Saudi Arabia’s most important oil fields and processing facilities. The drones and cruise missiles flew so low and with such stealth that neither their takeoff nor their impending attack was detected in time by Saudi or U.S. radar. The pro-Iranian Houthi militia in Yemen claimed responsibility for the raid. That was as believable as saying that Santa Claus did it.
Some Israeli strategists argue that this surprise attack was the Middle East’s “Pearl Harbor.” An exaggeration? Maybe not.
Whoever in Iran came up with the idea of this daring airstrike just got a big pay raise. It could not have worked out better. Because the sound you hear coming from every Arab capital and Israel is the same sound you hear from your automated driving assistant when your car has suddenly deviated from the mapped route:
“Recalculating, recalculating, recalculating.”
Every country is now recalculating its security strategy, starting with Israel. Consider how Uzi Even, one of the founding scientists of Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor, assessed the Iranian strike.
“A total of 20 cruise missiles and drones were used in the attack,” Even wrote in Haaretz on Sunday. “Drone wreckage discovered in Saudi Arabia shows that the Iranians are manufacturing and operating drones so advanced (with jet engines and significant stealth capabilities) that they do not lag behind Israeli capabilities in this field. Seventeen targets incurred a direct hit in this concentrated bombardment. Considering the 20 projectiles whose debris was found at the attack site, that’s an 85-percent success rate, which indicates the very high capability and reliability of the technology that was used.”
Photos of the aftermath, Even added, “show the precision that was achieved in the attack. Each one of the spherical gas tankers in the picture was hit in the center. The pictures also show that the strike precision was one meter. … The Iranians, or their proxies, showed that they can hit specific targets with great precision and from a distance of hundreds of kilometers. We have to accept the fact that we are now vulnerable to such a strike.”
Even’s conclusion: Operations at Israel’s “Dimona nuclear reactor should be halted. It has now been shown to be vulnerable, and the harm it could cause would likely exceed its benefits.”
Not a bad day’s work for Iran — and Israel wasn’t even the target. Now let’s look at the Arabs. The Saudis and the United Arab Emirates got a double shock from the Iranian attack. It simultaneously exposed Iran’s precision and Donald Trump’s isolationism.
It had to have been quite the cold shower for the Saudis to call Washington to discuss what the U.S. planned as a strategic response only to discover that our president was busy looking for the cellphone number of Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, to see if he could cut the same deal with him that he did with North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong-un: Give me a photo-op handshake, and we can do business.
Translated into Arabic, Trump was saying to the Gulf Arabs: “I forgot to tell you. I’m only interested in selling you our weapons — not using them in your defense. But don’t forget to stay in my hotel when you’re next in D.C.! Operators are standing by.”
The Saudis and the U.A.E. got the message. They, too, got busy looking for the Iranian leader’s cellphone number — and the number of the pro-Iranian emir of Qatar, too. Time to get right with all the neighbors.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/opin ... d=45305309
Iran’s airstrike on Saudi oil sites exposed vulnerabilities around the region.
Excerpt:
If you think Trump’s withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria will make the Middle East more explosive, you’re correct. But there’s far more going on. Those troops were also interrupting Iran’s efforts to build a land bridge from Tehran to Beirut to tighten a noose around Israel — and their removal could help bring the Iran-Israel shadow war out into the open. This is the really big story in the Middle East today.
Here’s the background: In the early hours of Sept. 14, the Iranian Air Force launched roughly 20 drones and cruise missiles at one of Saudi Arabia’s most important oil fields and processing facilities. The drones and cruise missiles flew so low and with such stealth that neither their takeoff nor their impending attack was detected in time by Saudi or U.S. radar. The pro-Iranian Houthi militia in Yemen claimed responsibility for the raid. That was as believable as saying that Santa Claus did it.
Some Israeli strategists argue that this surprise attack was the Middle East’s “Pearl Harbor.” An exaggeration? Maybe not.
Whoever in Iran came up with the idea of this daring airstrike just got a big pay raise. It could not have worked out better. Because the sound you hear coming from every Arab capital and Israel is the same sound you hear from your automated driving assistant when your car has suddenly deviated from the mapped route:
“Recalculating, recalculating, recalculating.”
Every country is now recalculating its security strategy, starting with Israel. Consider how Uzi Even, one of the founding scientists of Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor, assessed the Iranian strike.
“A total of 20 cruise missiles and drones were used in the attack,” Even wrote in Haaretz on Sunday. “Drone wreckage discovered in Saudi Arabia shows that the Iranians are manufacturing and operating drones so advanced (with jet engines and significant stealth capabilities) that they do not lag behind Israeli capabilities in this field. Seventeen targets incurred a direct hit in this concentrated bombardment. Considering the 20 projectiles whose debris was found at the attack site, that’s an 85-percent success rate, which indicates the very high capability and reliability of the technology that was used.”
Photos of the aftermath, Even added, “show the precision that was achieved in the attack. Each one of the spherical gas tankers in the picture was hit in the center. The pictures also show that the strike precision was one meter. … The Iranians, or their proxies, showed that they can hit specific targets with great precision and from a distance of hundreds of kilometers. We have to accept the fact that we are now vulnerable to such a strike.”
Even’s conclusion: Operations at Israel’s “Dimona nuclear reactor should be halted. It has now been shown to be vulnerable, and the harm it could cause would likely exceed its benefits.”
Not a bad day’s work for Iran — and Israel wasn’t even the target. Now let’s look at the Arabs. The Saudis and the United Arab Emirates got a double shock from the Iranian attack. It simultaneously exposed Iran’s precision and Donald Trump’s isolationism.
It had to have been quite the cold shower for the Saudis to call Washington to discuss what the U.S. planned as a strategic response only to discover that our president was busy looking for the cellphone number of Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, to see if he could cut the same deal with him that he did with North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong-un: Give me a photo-op handshake, and we can do business.
Translated into Arabic, Trump was saying to the Gulf Arabs: “I forgot to tell you. I’m only interested in selling you our weapons — not using them in your defense. But don’t forget to stay in my hotel when you’re next in D.C.! Operators are standing by.”
The Saudis and the U.A.E. got the message. They, too, got busy looking for the Iranian leader’s cellphone number — and the number of the pro-Iranian emir of Qatar, too. Time to get right with all the neighbors.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/opin ... d=45305309
The Arab Spring Rekindled in Beirut
The Lebanese government falls to a popular uprising as Iran’s role across the Middle East is questioned.
BEIRUT — Eight years after the Arab Spring, massive street protests over corruption, sectarianism and official contempt for the citizenry have brought down the Lebanese government of Prime Minister Saad Hariri. The sources of Arab rage have not changed.
Across the region, societal dysfunction still runs deep. Very young populations are frustrated by the lack of economic opportunity and by constant insults to their dignity in the form of governmental impunity and waste. A millennial generation is sick of nepotism, frozen political systems and waste. Neither the oppression of dictators nor the promises of Islamic radicalism have delivered the human dignity that comes with government accountability.
Young Arabs want agency. They don’t want to pay their water bill and then pay again to bribe some official to get connected to the water pipe that goes to a minister’s home and so actually works. They don’t want to watch the same old men doing the same old things over and over again, before handing power to their sons.
“I’m at a dead end,” Hariri said as he quit. He might have been speaking about the Lebanese system with its sectarian division of the spoils and its inefficiency so gross that stretches of highway stink of sewage, electricity comes and goes, and the internet flickers to life from time to time.
“Our kids have been growing up in a polluted place,” Kamal Mansour, a businessman, told me. “They have put labels on us. But we are Lebanese.” Mansour turned to the protesters around him in the Hamra district of Beirut: “I don’t ask if they are Sunni or Shia Muslim, or Maronite, or whatever,” he said.
Lebanon fought a devastating civil war in the late 20th century over precisely those divisions. Balancing the political strength of each religious group seemed like a way of keeping the peace. But to a new generation, it looks like a way to perpetuate the power of corrupt clan leaders who pay their followers to entrench their influence. For example, Nabih Berri, the Shia speaker of the Parliament, has held that post for 27 years.
The Lebanese in the streets want to be Lebanese, period. They want to elect a decent government that respects them. They are tired of Lebanon as a plaything for the region’s powers. The Palestine Liberation Organization came and left. Israel came and left. Syria came and left. Iran, through its Hezbollah surrogate, is still in Lebanon.
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, the militant group and political party that is a member of Hariri’s coalition, spoke out last week against the government’s resigning and warned of possible civil war. (He appeared last week flanked by the Lebanese flag, a departure from his normal practice of speaking beside Hezbollah’s yellow flag.)
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/29/opin ... d=45305309
The Lebanese government falls to a popular uprising as Iran’s role across the Middle East is questioned.
BEIRUT — Eight years after the Arab Spring, massive street protests over corruption, sectarianism and official contempt for the citizenry have brought down the Lebanese government of Prime Minister Saad Hariri. The sources of Arab rage have not changed.
Across the region, societal dysfunction still runs deep. Very young populations are frustrated by the lack of economic opportunity and by constant insults to their dignity in the form of governmental impunity and waste. A millennial generation is sick of nepotism, frozen political systems and waste. Neither the oppression of dictators nor the promises of Islamic radicalism have delivered the human dignity that comes with government accountability.
Young Arabs want agency. They don’t want to pay their water bill and then pay again to bribe some official to get connected to the water pipe that goes to a minister’s home and so actually works. They don’t want to watch the same old men doing the same old things over and over again, before handing power to their sons.
“I’m at a dead end,” Hariri said as he quit. He might have been speaking about the Lebanese system with its sectarian division of the spoils and its inefficiency so gross that stretches of highway stink of sewage, electricity comes and goes, and the internet flickers to life from time to time.
“Our kids have been growing up in a polluted place,” Kamal Mansour, a businessman, told me. “They have put labels on us. But we are Lebanese.” Mansour turned to the protesters around him in the Hamra district of Beirut: “I don’t ask if they are Sunni or Shia Muslim, or Maronite, or whatever,” he said.
Lebanon fought a devastating civil war in the late 20th century over precisely those divisions. Balancing the political strength of each religious group seemed like a way of keeping the peace. But to a new generation, it looks like a way to perpetuate the power of corrupt clan leaders who pay their followers to entrench their influence. For example, Nabih Berri, the Shia speaker of the Parliament, has held that post for 27 years.
The Lebanese in the streets want to be Lebanese, period. They want to elect a decent government that respects them. They are tired of Lebanon as a plaything for the region’s powers. The Palestine Liberation Organization came and left. Israel came and left. Syria came and left. Iran, through its Hezbollah surrogate, is still in Lebanon.
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, the militant group and political party that is a member of Hariri’s coalition, spoke out last week against the government’s resigning and warned of possible civil war. (He appeared last week flanked by the Lebanese flag, a departure from his normal practice of speaking beside Hezbollah’s yellow flag.)
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/29/opin ... d=45305309
The Ayatollah Comes for the Internet
The almost complete shutdown imposed over the weekend sets a new oppressive benchmark.
Authoritarian governments have increasingly sought to use internet disruptions and blockades as weapons to crush dissent. Reports of internet shutdowns have recently come from Hong Kong, Iraq and Indian-controlled Kashmir, where access to the internet has been cut off for more than three months now.
Now it’s Iran’s turn. Over the weekend, the government imposed a nationwide internet blackout to suppress news of anti-government protests. The country’s internet access was disrupted during the protests in 2017 and 2018 — but this almost complete shutdown sets a new oppressive benchmark.
On Saturday morning, I spoke to a relative in Tehran who was trying to beat the city’s notorious traffic, looking for the best route to run an errand. She went on Waze, a popular navigation app that crowdsources traffic information.
Within moments, she realized that a number of Tehran residents were using the app to coordinate “car protests” — where Iranians park their cars on the city’s roads to create roadblocks — against the government’s decision to raise gasoline prices by 50 percent. Protests erupted across the country.
Iran has been smarting under an economic crisis since the most recent round of American sanctions banning Tehran’s oil sales: Some estimates suggest that inflation is around 40 percent, unemployment is at 14 percent, the economy is expected to contract by 9 percent and the Iranian currency has lost more than half of its value against the dollar since the Trump administration reimposed sanctions.
In Tehran, Waze users were sending traffic reports calling for protests. My relative followed one to a spot on Sattari Highway, an expressway running from northern to southern Tehran. She shared her photographs and videos from the protest with me and some mutual friends on a social media chat. Hundreds of cars stopped on the highway, and people were protesting. Tires and garbage cans were on fire around her.
After she got back home, she expressed her surprise that the internet was still working and we were able to communicate. Hamrahe Aval, or the Mobile Telecommunication Company of Iran, a mobile phone and internet service provider with more than 50 million subscribers, had stopped working on Saturday morning in Tehran. Her Irancell network was still connected, though working at a slower speed. By the afternoon I lost touch with her.
Tehran is now able to shut down internet access to tens of millions of people within a day. Ninety-three percent to 95 percent of all internet users in Iran were offline within 24 hours of the shutdown, according to one report, the exceptions being the organs of the government and some public universities.
Internet shutdowns are costly for a nation’s economy. NetBlocks and The Internet Society estimate this one could cost Iran about $370 million a day, but Tehran is likely to have diminished financial loss by relying on its National Information Network, a domestic digital infrastructure sometimes referred to as the “national internet” or “halal net.”
Since the 2009 Green Movement, when the Iranian authorities grasped the potential of the internet to aid dissent, the government has been trying to roll out the National Information Network. While justified on national security and economic grounds, in practice it helps to control political expression and to minimize the economic losses from a complete internet shutdown.
In 2010, Iran officially started the development of this national internet project, which would securely host digital platforms inside the country and be potentially disconnected from the global internet. Crucially, the national internet could block or filter content according to Iran’s strict press regulations. The rights of users over their data and its monitoring and storage would naturally be accessible by the authorities.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/19/opin ... 0920191120
The almost complete shutdown imposed over the weekend sets a new oppressive benchmark.
Authoritarian governments have increasingly sought to use internet disruptions and blockades as weapons to crush dissent. Reports of internet shutdowns have recently come from Hong Kong, Iraq and Indian-controlled Kashmir, where access to the internet has been cut off for more than three months now.
Now it’s Iran’s turn. Over the weekend, the government imposed a nationwide internet blackout to suppress news of anti-government protests. The country’s internet access was disrupted during the protests in 2017 and 2018 — but this almost complete shutdown sets a new oppressive benchmark.
On Saturday morning, I spoke to a relative in Tehran who was trying to beat the city’s notorious traffic, looking for the best route to run an errand. She went on Waze, a popular navigation app that crowdsources traffic information.
Within moments, she realized that a number of Tehran residents were using the app to coordinate “car protests” — where Iranians park their cars on the city’s roads to create roadblocks — against the government’s decision to raise gasoline prices by 50 percent. Protests erupted across the country.
Iran has been smarting under an economic crisis since the most recent round of American sanctions banning Tehran’s oil sales: Some estimates suggest that inflation is around 40 percent, unemployment is at 14 percent, the economy is expected to contract by 9 percent and the Iranian currency has lost more than half of its value against the dollar since the Trump administration reimposed sanctions.
In Tehran, Waze users were sending traffic reports calling for protests. My relative followed one to a spot on Sattari Highway, an expressway running from northern to southern Tehran. She shared her photographs and videos from the protest with me and some mutual friends on a social media chat. Hundreds of cars stopped on the highway, and people were protesting. Tires and garbage cans were on fire around her.
After she got back home, she expressed her surprise that the internet was still working and we were able to communicate. Hamrahe Aval, or the Mobile Telecommunication Company of Iran, a mobile phone and internet service provider with more than 50 million subscribers, had stopped working on Saturday morning in Tehran. Her Irancell network was still connected, though working at a slower speed. By the afternoon I lost touch with her.
Tehran is now able to shut down internet access to tens of millions of people within a day. Ninety-three percent to 95 percent of all internet users in Iran were offline within 24 hours of the shutdown, according to one report, the exceptions being the organs of the government and some public universities.
Internet shutdowns are costly for a nation’s economy. NetBlocks and The Internet Society estimate this one could cost Iran about $370 million a day, but Tehran is likely to have diminished financial loss by relying on its National Information Network, a domestic digital infrastructure sometimes referred to as the “national internet” or “halal net.”
Since the 2009 Green Movement, when the Iranian authorities grasped the potential of the internet to aid dissent, the government has been trying to roll out the National Information Network. While justified on national security and economic grounds, in practice it helps to control political expression and to minimize the economic losses from a complete internet shutdown.
In 2010, Iran officially started the development of this national internet project, which would securely host digital platforms inside the country and be potentially disconnected from the global internet. Crucially, the national internet could block or filter content according to Iran’s strict press regulations. The rights of users over their data and its monitoring and storage would naturally be accessible by the authorities.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/19/opin ... 0920191120
Iran Is Crushing Freedom One Country at a Time
Grass-roots movements in Iran, Iraq and other nations continue to push for rights nonetheless.
Having covered the Middle East my entire adult life, I’m seeing some trends emerging there that I’ve never seen before.
One is from the streets of Beirut to the streets of Baghdad to streets all across Iran, Middle Easterners are demanding to be treated as citizens with rights, and not just members of a sect or tribe with passions to be manipulated. And they’re clamoring for noncorrupt institutions — a deep state — and the rule of law, not just the arbitrary rule of militias, thugs or autocrats.
And right when Middle Easterners are demanding to be treated as citizens — not Sunnis or Shiites — Americans are devolving into Sunnis and Shiites or, as we call them, Democrats and Republicans, with the same tribal mentality: rule or die.
And worse, the G.O.P. has elevated the exact same kind of autocrat that Middle Easterners are trying to get rid of. Our sultan is just like one of theirs: He shirks the rule of law, nurtures a cult of personality through his own state-directed media, surrounds himself with sycophants, con men and conspiracy buffs, and denounces our professional deep state — its bureaucrats, diplomats and military officers — for trying to shackle him with our 230-year-old constitutional checks and balances.
Go figure. We’re becoming them right when they want to become us — or what used to be us.
The other trend I’m seeing is the striking contrast between what Middle East politics has long been about in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen and what average people in these countries are now seeking.
For years, Sunni and Shiite party bosses and militia leaders at the top have manipulated sectarian and tribal identities below to cement themselves in power and make themselves the brokers for who get jobs and contracts. But there’s been a stunning shift in the whole flow of politics in some of these countries. It’s gone from Sunnis versus Shiites across the board to Sunnis and Shiites at the bottom locking arms together against all their leaders at the top.
More....
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/opin ... 0920191204
Grass-roots movements in Iran, Iraq and other nations continue to push for rights nonetheless.
Having covered the Middle East my entire adult life, I’m seeing some trends emerging there that I’ve never seen before.
One is from the streets of Beirut to the streets of Baghdad to streets all across Iran, Middle Easterners are demanding to be treated as citizens with rights, and not just members of a sect or tribe with passions to be manipulated. And they’re clamoring for noncorrupt institutions — a deep state — and the rule of law, not just the arbitrary rule of militias, thugs or autocrats.
And right when Middle Easterners are demanding to be treated as citizens — not Sunnis or Shiites — Americans are devolving into Sunnis and Shiites or, as we call them, Democrats and Republicans, with the same tribal mentality: rule or die.
And worse, the G.O.P. has elevated the exact same kind of autocrat that Middle Easterners are trying to get rid of. Our sultan is just like one of theirs: He shirks the rule of law, nurtures a cult of personality through his own state-directed media, surrounds himself with sycophants, con men and conspiracy buffs, and denounces our professional deep state — its bureaucrats, diplomats and military officers — for trying to shackle him with our 230-year-old constitutional checks and balances.
Go figure. We’re becoming them right when they want to become us — or what used to be us.
The other trend I’m seeing is the striking contrast between what Middle East politics has long been about in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen and what average people in these countries are now seeking.
For years, Sunni and Shiite party bosses and militia leaders at the top have manipulated sectarian and tribal identities below to cement themselves in power and make themselves the brokers for who get jobs and contracts. But there’s been a stunning shift in the whole flow of politics in some of these countries. It’s gone from Sunnis versus Shiites across the board to Sunnis and Shiites at the bottom locking arms together against all their leaders at the top.
More....
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/opin ... 0920191204
How Iran Justifies Its Violence
Tehran uses religious arguments, anti-imperialist nationalism and neo-Stalinist repression to ensure compliance.
Historians will record the blood-soaked days of November as some of the worst mass killings of protesters in modern Iranian history. A sudden increase in fuel prices led to protests across the country; the regime responded with brute violence.
Amnesty International has verified “at least” 304 deaths between Nov. 15 and 18. Credible Iranian opposition sources have cited a preliminary figure of 366 while The New York Times reported that “180 to 450 people, and possibly more, were killed,” with “at least 2,000 wounded and 7,000 detained.” A statement from the Iranian Writers’ Association observed: “Every corner of Iran is mourning the atrocities.” Iranian artists, physicians, trade unionists and teachers have condemned the repression.
The Islamic Republic is in damage control mode as it seeks to manage growing public anger and international demands for accountability. Reversing the regime’s early narrative that these protests were a foreign plot, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, has admitted the loss of innocent life. He said these citizens were “martyrs” who deserved financial compensation.
These events raise a series of important questions. Why is the Islamic Republic seemingly indifferent to human rights criticism? How does the Iranian government justify its use of violence to crush dissent? Is there anything the international community can do to alleviate this situation?
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/18/opin ... 0920191219
Tehran uses religious arguments, anti-imperialist nationalism and neo-Stalinist repression to ensure compliance.
Historians will record the blood-soaked days of November as some of the worst mass killings of protesters in modern Iranian history. A sudden increase in fuel prices led to protests across the country; the regime responded with brute violence.
Amnesty International has verified “at least” 304 deaths between Nov. 15 and 18. Credible Iranian opposition sources have cited a preliminary figure of 366 while The New York Times reported that “180 to 450 people, and possibly more, were killed,” with “at least 2,000 wounded and 7,000 detained.” A statement from the Iranian Writers’ Association observed: “Every corner of Iran is mourning the atrocities.” Iranian artists, physicians, trade unionists and teachers have condemned the repression.
The Islamic Republic is in damage control mode as it seeks to manage growing public anger and international demands for accountability. Reversing the regime’s early narrative that these protests were a foreign plot, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, has admitted the loss of innocent life. He said these citizens were “martyrs” who deserved financial compensation.
These events raise a series of important questions. Why is the Islamic Republic seemingly indifferent to human rights criticism? How does the Iranian government justify its use of violence to crush dissent? Is there anything the international community can do to alleviate this situation?
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/18/opin ... 0920191219
Trump’s Ground Game Against Iran
The assassination of Qassim Suleimani is a seismic event in the Middle East.
More than any other American military operation since the invasion of Iraq, the assassination yesterday of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the head of Iran’s Qods Force of its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, is a seismic event. The killings of Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leaders of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, were certainly meaningful, but they were also largely symbolic, because their organizations had been mostly destroyed. Taking out the architect of the Islamic Republic’s decades-long active campaign of violence against the United States and its allies, especially Israel, represents a tectonic shift in Middle Eastern politics.
To see just how significant Mr. Suleimani’s death truly is, it helps to understand the geopolitical game he’d devoted his life to playing. In Lebanon, Mr. Suleimani built Lebanese Hezbollah into the powerful state within a state that we know today. A terrorist organization receiving its funds, arms and marching orders from Tehran, Hezbollah has a missile arsenal larger than that of most countries in the region. The group’s success has been astounding, helping to cement Iran’s influence not just in Lebanon but farther around the Arab world.
Building up on this successful experience, Mr. Suleimani spent the last decade replicating the Hezbollah model in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, propping up local militias with precision weapons and tactical know-how. In Syria, his forces have allied with Russia to prop up the regime of Bashar al-Assad, a project that, in practice, has meant driving over 10 million people from their homes and killing well over half a million. In Iraq, as we have seen in recent days, Mr. Suleimani’s militias ride roughshod over the legitimate state institutions. They rose to power, of course, after participating in an insurgency, of which he was the architect, against American and coalition forces. Hundreds of American soldiers lost their lives to the weapons that the Qods Force provided to its Iraqi proxies.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opin ... 3053090104
The assassination of Qassim Suleimani is a seismic event in the Middle East.
More than any other American military operation since the invasion of Iraq, the assassination yesterday of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the head of Iran’s Qods Force of its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, is a seismic event. The killings of Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leaders of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, were certainly meaningful, but they were also largely symbolic, because their organizations had been mostly destroyed. Taking out the architect of the Islamic Republic’s decades-long active campaign of violence against the United States and its allies, especially Israel, represents a tectonic shift in Middle Eastern politics.
To see just how significant Mr. Suleimani’s death truly is, it helps to understand the geopolitical game he’d devoted his life to playing. In Lebanon, Mr. Suleimani built Lebanese Hezbollah into the powerful state within a state that we know today. A terrorist organization receiving its funds, arms and marching orders from Tehran, Hezbollah has a missile arsenal larger than that of most countries in the region. The group’s success has been astounding, helping to cement Iran’s influence not just in Lebanon but farther around the Arab world.
Building up on this successful experience, Mr. Suleimani spent the last decade replicating the Hezbollah model in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, propping up local militias with precision weapons and tactical know-how. In Syria, his forces have allied with Russia to prop up the regime of Bashar al-Assad, a project that, in practice, has meant driving over 10 million people from their homes and killing well over half a million. In Iraq, as we have seen in recent days, Mr. Suleimani’s militias ride roughshod over the legitimate state institutions. They rose to power, of course, after participating in an insurgency, of which he was the architect, against American and coalition forces. Hundreds of American soldiers lost their lives to the weapons that the Qods Force provided to its Iraqi proxies.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opin ... 3053090104
Trump Kills Iran’s Most Overrated Warrior
Suleimani pushed his country to build an empire, but drove it into the ground instead.
One day they may name a street after President Trump in Tehran. Why? Because Trump just ordered the assassination of possibly the dumbest man in Iran and the most overrated strategist in the Middle East: Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani.
Think of the miscalculations this guy made. In 2015, the United States and the major European powers agreed to lift virtually all their sanctions on Iran, many dating back to 1979, in return for Iran halting its nuclear weapons program for a mere 15 years, but still maintaining the right to have a peaceful nuclear program. It was a great deal for Iran. Its economy grew by over 12 percent the next year. And what did Suleimani do with that windfall?
He and Iran’s supreme leader launched an aggressive regional imperial project that made Iran and its proxies the de facto controlling power in Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and Sana. This freaked out U.S. allies in the Sunni Arab world and Israel — and they pressed the Trump administration to respond. Trump himself was eager to tear up any treaty forged by President Obama, so he exited the nuclear deal and imposed oil sanctions on Iran that have now shrunk the Iranian economy by almost 10 percent and sent unemployment over 16 percent.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opin ... ogin-email
Suleimani pushed his country to build an empire, but drove it into the ground instead.
One day they may name a street after President Trump in Tehran. Why? Because Trump just ordered the assassination of possibly the dumbest man in Iran and the most overrated strategist in the Middle East: Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani.
Think of the miscalculations this guy made. In 2015, the United States and the major European powers agreed to lift virtually all their sanctions on Iran, many dating back to 1979, in return for Iran halting its nuclear weapons program for a mere 15 years, but still maintaining the right to have a peaceful nuclear program. It was a great deal for Iran. Its economy grew by over 12 percent the next year. And what did Suleimani do with that windfall?
He and Iran’s supreme leader launched an aggressive regional imperial project that made Iran and its proxies the de facto controlling power in Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and Sana. This freaked out U.S. allies in the Sunni Arab world and Israel — and they pressed the Trump administration to respond. Trump himself was eager to tear up any treaty forged by President Obama, so he exited the nuclear deal and imposed oil sanctions on Iran that have now shrunk the Iranian economy by almost 10 percent and sent unemployment over 16 percent.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opin ... ogin-email
Skip the Vatican Museum. Go to the National Museum of Qatar.
When it comes to visual and performing arts, the Gulf countries are all about the future, and there’s no need to get in line or suffer selfie-stick fatigue.
The National Museum of Qatar in Doha.Credit...Kamran Jebreili/Associated Press
DOHA, Qatar — The future of the art world may be in a vast desert landscape where audacious museums are melding both local culture and the outside world in a way that feels fresh and revolutionary.
The cities of the Gulf region — the modern-day, sun-draped Gothams with their skyscrapers that have sprouted up like weeds — are home to some of the world’s newest and newly appreciated museums, visual arts scenes and even opera houses. By being thrust forward in time at warp speed over the last few decades — fueled by seriously cranked-up air-conditioning and the bountiful oil production from beneath their deserts that began ramping up in the 1950s — these traffic- and heat-fueled metropolises have the space, desire and revenue to help create the new frontier for arts and culture.
And what feels futuristic is the way in which museums are being conceived and curated, particularly through impressive technological advances. Galleries are embracing not only pre-Islamic art and culture where it was forbidden for centuries, but also contemporary global art, creating an array of works to take in.
That mash-up of sensibilities also lies at the core of global criticism surrounding human rights violations in the region, from the exploitation of laborers from Asian and African countries to discrimination against gays and women. Those issues are at the heart of the region’s growing pains: Who dictates how countries should change, and at what speed? And do we avoid those countries, or do we support their emergence as global arts and tourism centers and therefore help instigate change?
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/opin ... 0920200107
When it comes to visual and performing arts, the Gulf countries are all about the future, and there’s no need to get in line or suffer selfie-stick fatigue.
The National Museum of Qatar in Doha.Credit...Kamran Jebreili/Associated Press
DOHA, Qatar — The future of the art world may be in a vast desert landscape where audacious museums are melding both local culture and the outside world in a way that feels fresh and revolutionary.
The cities of the Gulf region — the modern-day, sun-draped Gothams with their skyscrapers that have sprouted up like weeds — are home to some of the world’s newest and newly appreciated museums, visual arts scenes and even opera houses. By being thrust forward in time at warp speed over the last few decades — fueled by seriously cranked-up air-conditioning and the bountiful oil production from beneath their deserts that began ramping up in the 1950s — these traffic- and heat-fueled metropolises have the space, desire and revenue to help create the new frontier for arts and culture.
And what feels futuristic is the way in which museums are being conceived and curated, particularly through impressive technological advances. Galleries are embracing not only pre-Islamic art and culture where it was forbidden for centuries, but also contemporary global art, creating an array of works to take in.
That mash-up of sensibilities also lies at the core of global criticism surrounding human rights violations in the region, from the exploitation of laborers from Asian and African countries to discrimination against gays and women. Those issues are at the heart of the region’s growing pains: Who dictates how countries should change, and at what speed? And do we avoid those countries, or do we support their emergence as global arts and tourism centers and therefore help instigate change?
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/opin ... 0920200107
Last edited by kmaherali on Thu Jan 16, 2020 11:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
A Sultan Dies. Can His Singular Diplomacy Survive?
America and Iran, Iran and Israel, Saudis and Houthis, Sunnis and Shiites — the ruler of Oman shuttled between them all.
In the first two years of the Trump administration, Sultan Qaboos bin Said, the late ruler of Oman, confronted a stark situation: Iran-backed Houthi rebels were fighting on his doorstep in Yemen, Israel was attacking his Palestinian allies, and Washington was largely giving up on diplomacy in the Middle East.
Instead of seeking refuge in the Saudi Arabia-led alliance of Sunni Gulf states, the veteran leader did something different. First, he invited the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, to his palace in Muscat. Then, he welcomed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Yossi Cohen, the head of the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, for a formal state visit.
In almost any other Arab country today, hosting the leaders of both the Jewish State and the Islamic Republic would be unthinkable. For Qaboos — who died on Jan. 10 after running his country for nearly 50 years — this was simply a way of reinforcing Oman’s status as the region’s most ambidextrous conciliator.
Though he remained little known outside diplomatic circles, Qaboos was, for much of his long career, an indispensable linchpin of the international order. In recent years, he often seemed like a throwback to another era.
As recently as November, Oman hosted indirect talks between Saudi Arabia and the Houthi rebels to try to end the devastating five-year war in Yemen. Yet the greatest fruit of Qaboos’s diplomacy was the rapprochement he helped engineer between Iran and the United States.
Those efforts began in 2009, just months after Barack Obama came to office. An Omani envoy offered to open a back channel to Tehran, and soon after, Oman negotiated the release of three American hikers detained in Iran. In 2012, top officials at the State Department began convening secretly with Iranian counterparts in Muscat to lay the groundwork for an eventual nuclear deal.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/16/opin ... 0920200116
America and Iran, Iran and Israel, Saudis and Houthis, Sunnis and Shiites — the ruler of Oman shuttled between them all.
In the first two years of the Trump administration, Sultan Qaboos bin Said, the late ruler of Oman, confronted a stark situation: Iran-backed Houthi rebels were fighting on his doorstep in Yemen, Israel was attacking his Palestinian allies, and Washington was largely giving up on diplomacy in the Middle East.
Instead of seeking refuge in the Saudi Arabia-led alliance of Sunni Gulf states, the veteran leader did something different. First, he invited the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, to his palace in Muscat. Then, he welcomed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Yossi Cohen, the head of the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, for a formal state visit.
In almost any other Arab country today, hosting the leaders of both the Jewish State and the Islamic Republic would be unthinkable. For Qaboos — who died on Jan. 10 after running his country for nearly 50 years — this was simply a way of reinforcing Oman’s status as the region’s most ambidextrous conciliator.
Though he remained little known outside diplomatic circles, Qaboos was, for much of his long career, an indispensable linchpin of the international order. In recent years, he often seemed like a throwback to another era.
As recently as November, Oman hosted indirect talks between Saudi Arabia and the Houthi rebels to try to end the devastating five-year war in Yemen. Yet the greatest fruit of Qaboos’s diplomacy was the rapprochement he helped engineer between Iran and the United States.
Those efforts began in 2009, just months after Barack Obama came to office. An Omani envoy offered to open a back channel to Tehran, and soon after, Oman negotiated the release of three American hikers detained in Iran. In 2012, top officials at the State Department began convening secretly with Iranian counterparts in Muscat to lay the groundwork for an eventual nuclear deal.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/16/opin ... 0920200116
Art Rises in the Saudi Desert, Shadowed by Politics
Some artists say Desert X AlUla is a step toward changing Saudi society. Critics call the government-funded exhibition “morally corrupt.”
AL ULA, Saudi Arabia — The Coachella art crowd had arrived in the Saudi desert, and chic caftans in head-turning colors outnumbered abayas on the sand. At a buffet ornamented with cantaloupes carved in the shape of flowers, waiters tended a fresh-squeezed juice station and rows of dainty canapés. Across the gold-and-russet sandstone canyon, the brawny rock formations sprouted contemporary art: an iridescent spaceshiplike sculpture, a glinting metal tunnel, a scattering of brightly painted spheres.
These were the fruits of Desert X AlUla, a partnership between Desert X, a California-based art biennial that had staged two previous exhibitions in the Coachella Valley, and the Saudi government, which had coaxed Desert X to mount a show in its own western desert at the country’s expense.
Controversy ensued, as it tends to when Saudi Arabia — whose government has hacked the iPhone of one of the world’s richest men, tortured dissidents, dismembered a critical journalist and helped ignite a humanitarian disaster in Yemen — overlaps with Western institutions. Three of Desert X’s board members, including the prominent artist Ed Ruscha, resigned in protest. The Los Angeles Times’s art critic, Christopher Knight, scathed the “morally corrupt” collaboration as “merely putting lipstick on a pig.”
For the Saudis, the benefits were clear. Until recently, many Saudis avoided the rock-hewn pre-Islamic tombs at Al Ula out of a pious superstition that they were haunted, and non-Muslim tourists who wanted to visit the country almost never found a way in. Now, in Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s drive to open Saudi society and expand its economy beyond oil, Al Ula is to be reincarnated as the kingdom’s star cultural and heritage attraction. Officials hope its miles of breathtaking desert and Petra-esque ancient tombs will draw 2 million tourists by 2035.
Photos and more...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/arts ... 3053090212
Some artists say Desert X AlUla is a step toward changing Saudi society. Critics call the government-funded exhibition “morally corrupt.”
AL ULA, Saudi Arabia — The Coachella art crowd had arrived in the Saudi desert, and chic caftans in head-turning colors outnumbered abayas on the sand. At a buffet ornamented with cantaloupes carved in the shape of flowers, waiters tended a fresh-squeezed juice station and rows of dainty canapés. Across the gold-and-russet sandstone canyon, the brawny rock formations sprouted contemporary art: an iridescent spaceshiplike sculpture, a glinting metal tunnel, a scattering of brightly painted spheres.
These were the fruits of Desert X AlUla, a partnership between Desert X, a California-based art biennial that had staged two previous exhibitions in the Coachella Valley, and the Saudi government, which had coaxed Desert X to mount a show in its own western desert at the country’s expense.
Controversy ensued, as it tends to when Saudi Arabia — whose government has hacked the iPhone of one of the world’s richest men, tortured dissidents, dismembered a critical journalist and helped ignite a humanitarian disaster in Yemen — overlaps with Western institutions. Three of Desert X’s board members, including the prominent artist Ed Ruscha, resigned in protest. The Los Angeles Times’s art critic, Christopher Knight, scathed the “morally corrupt” collaboration as “merely putting lipstick on a pig.”
For the Saudis, the benefits were clear. Until recently, many Saudis avoided the rock-hewn pre-Islamic tombs at Al Ula out of a pious superstition that they were haunted, and non-Muslim tourists who wanted to visit the country almost never found a way in. Now, in Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s drive to open Saudi society and expand its economy beyond oil, Al Ula is to be reincarnated as the kingdom’s star cultural and heritage attraction. Officials hope its miles of breathtaking desert and Petra-esque ancient tombs will draw 2 million tourists by 2035.
Photos and more...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/arts ... 3053090212
From Dubai to Mars, With Stops in Colorado and Japan
The United Arab Emirates used a novel approach to build the Hope spacecraft, which launches for the red planet this summer.
BOULDER, Colo. — In December, a spacecraft named Hope was motionless in the middle of a large clean room on the campus of the University of Colorado, mounted securely on a stand.
But engineers were tricking Hope — a foil-wrapped box about the size and weight of a Mini Cooper — into thinking it was speeding at more than 10,000 miles per hour as it pulled into orbit at Mars. It was a simulation to make sure that the guidance, navigation and control systems would respond correctly to a variety of less-than-perfect circumstances when it arrives at Mars for real next year.
While this spacecraft was assembled on American soil, it will not be exploring the red planet for NASA. Hope is instead an effort by the United Arab Emirates, an oil-rich country smaller than the state of Maine and one that has never sent anything out into the solar system.
Emirati engineers worked here, close to the ski slopes of the Rocky Mountains and far from the sands of the Middle East, learning from their American counterparts. It was part of the Emirates’ planning for the future when petroleum no longer flows as bountifully, to invest its current wealth in new “knowledge-based” industries.
“How do you develop highly skilled people that are able to take on higher risks?” said Sarah al-Amiri, the minister of state for advanced sciences for the U.A.E., who also leads the science portion of the Mars mission. “That was the reason to go to space exploration.”
As a newcomer, the U.A.E. has taken a novel approach. It could have tried to do everything itself, developing homegrown technology similar to what India has done. That would have taken years longer. Alternatively, it could have bought someone else’s spacecraft design, which would have been the quickest path.
Instead, the country has sought partners with long experience in sending machines into space. This, its space team believed, would help avoid many of the pitfalls of trying to pull off such missions for the first time, while training future engineers who will be expected to step up to bigger roles in the next mission. In the process, the country’s leaders hope to sow seeds for future companies.
“The government really wanted to create that ecosystem or at least help in creating that ecosystem,” said Omran Sharaf, the project manager for the Emirates’ Mars mission. “Soon. They want to accelerate the process. Don’t start from scratch. Work with others. Take it to the next level now.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/15/scie ... 0920200218
The United Arab Emirates used a novel approach to build the Hope spacecraft, which launches for the red planet this summer.
BOULDER, Colo. — In December, a spacecraft named Hope was motionless in the middle of a large clean room on the campus of the University of Colorado, mounted securely on a stand.
But engineers were tricking Hope — a foil-wrapped box about the size and weight of a Mini Cooper — into thinking it was speeding at more than 10,000 miles per hour as it pulled into orbit at Mars. It was a simulation to make sure that the guidance, navigation and control systems would respond correctly to a variety of less-than-perfect circumstances when it arrives at Mars for real next year.
While this spacecraft was assembled on American soil, it will not be exploring the red planet for NASA. Hope is instead an effort by the United Arab Emirates, an oil-rich country smaller than the state of Maine and one that has never sent anything out into the solar system.
Emirati engineers worked here, close to the ski slopes of the Rocky Mountains and far from the sands of the Middle East, learning from their American counterparts. It was part of the Emirates’ planning for the future when petroleum no longer flows as bountifully, to invest its current wealth in new “knowledge-based” industries.
“How do you develop highly skilled people that are able to take on higher risks?” said Sarah al-Amiri, the minister of state for advanced sciences for the U.A.E., who also leads the science portion of the Mars mission. “That was the reason to go to space exploration.”
As a newcomer, the U.A.E. has taken a novel approach. It could have tried to do everything itself, developing homegrown technology similar to what India has done. That would have taken years longer. Alternatively, it could have bought someone else’s spacecraft design, which would have been the quickest path.
Instead, the country has sought partners with long experience in sending machines into space. This, its space team believed, would help avoid many of the pitfalls of trying to pull off such missions for the first time, while training future engineers who will be expected to step up to bigger roles in the next mission. In the process, the country’s leaders hope to sow seeds for future companies.
“The government really wanted to create that ecosystem or at least help in creating that ecosystem,” said Omran Sharaf, the project manager for the Emirates’ Mars mission. “Soon. They want to accelerate the process. Don’t start from scratch. Work with others. Take it to the next level now.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/15/scie ... 0920200218
Will the Virus Trigger a Second Arab Spring?
The coronavirus outbreak is likely to bring into focus the legitimacy and governance deficit of troubled Middle Eastern regimes.
On a recent visit to Libya, I met a family living in an improvised shelter in a displaced persons camp east of Tripoli. One of the tens of thousands Libyan families uprooted by war, the family of seven was living in a room barely 20 paces long and half as wide. A clothesline, a pile of mattresses, a hot plate and the stench of body odor filled the room. Outside, they faced a shortage of potable water and abusive taunts from locals.
The spread of the novel coronavirus will have a devastating effect on the Middle East’s communities of refugees and migrants. The pandemic may also bring into focus the legitimacy and governance deficit of increasingly troubled Middle Eastern regimes.
A swift public health and economic response could strengthen authoritarian rule by these regimes, but not indefinitely. A critical lesson of the 2011 Arab uprisings and the protests that erupted last year is that without more inclusive governance, less corruption and greater economic equity, technocratic and coercive tools are only stopgap measures. The demands for citizen buy-in are likely to grow in the Middle East in the pandemic’s aftermath.
The pandemic’s most immediate and ruinous impact will be felt in the region’s active civil wars: Libya, Yemen and Syria.
More....
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/opin ... 778d3e6de3
The coronavirus outbreak is likely to bring into focus the legitimacy and governance deficit of troubled Middle Eastern regimes.
On a recent visit to Libya, I met a family living in an improvised shelter in a displaced persons camp east of Tripoli. One of the tens of thousands Libyan families uprooted by war, the family of seven was living in a room barely 20 paces long and half as wide. A clothesline, a pile of mattresses, a hot plate and the stench of body odor filled the room. Outside, they faced a shortage of potable water and abusive taunts from locals.
The spread of the novel coronavirus will have a devastating effect on the Middle East’s communities of refugees and migrants. The pandemic may also bring into focus the legitimacy and governance deficit of increasingly troubled Middle Eastern regimes.
A swift public health and economic response could strengthen authoritarian rule by these regimes, but not indefinitely. A critical lesson of the 2011 Arab uprisings and the protests that erupted last year is that without more inclusive governance, less corruption and greater economic equity, technocratic and coercive tools are only stopgap measures. The demands for citizen buy-in are likely to grow in the Middle East in the pandemic’s aftermath.
The pandemic’s most immediate and ruinous impact will be felt in the region’s active civil wars: Libya, Yemen and Syria.
More....
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/opin ... 778d3e6de3
Virus Forces Persian Gulf States to Reckon With Migrant Labor
The Mideast’s wealthiest countries depend on foreigners to do jobs their citizens won’t. But the virus has hobbled the arrangement and drawn attention to its inequities.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Kuwaiti talk show panelists were holding forth on an issue that the coronavirus has pushed to the forefront of national debate: whether their tiny, oil-rich monarchy should rely as heavily as it does on foreign laborers, who have suffered most of the country’s infections and borne much of the cost of its lockdown.
“Go to malls in Kuwait — would you ever see a Kuwaiti working there?” said one guest, Ahmad Baqer. “No. They’re all different nationalities.”
Not long after, a South Asian man slipped into the camera frame, serving tea to each panelist from a tray. He appeared three times during the program, his presence unacknowledged except by one panelist who waved away a fresh cup.
In the Middle East’s wealthiest societies, the machinery of daily life depends on migrant laborers from Asia, Africa and poorer Arab countries — millions of “tea boys,” housemaids, doctors, construction workers, deliverymen, chefs, garbagemen, guards, hairdressers, hoteliers and more, who often outnumber the native population.
They support families back home by doing the jobs citizens cannot or will not take. But as oil revenues plummet, migrant labor camps become coronavirus hot spots and citizens demand that their governments protect them first, the pandemic has prompted a reckoning with the status quo.
Hostility toward foreigners is growing louder. So are questions about how to replace migrants with citizens and calls for reforming the way foreign labor is imported and treated.
“The two things that Gulf countries depend on the most, oil prices and foreign workers, these two have been hard hit with the coronavirus,” said Eman Alhussein, a fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. “The coronavirus has unleashed all these issues that have been put on the back burner for a long time.”
For many of the Arab states’ foreign workers, who sent more than $124 billion to their home countries in 2017, the coronavirus’s fallout is bleakly straightforward.
Tens of thousands have lost their jobs during government-ordered lockdowns, leaving them to ration dwindling food supplies while their families struggle without their remittances. Others have fallen sick as the coronavirus tears through their meager, crowded dormitory-style housing.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/09/worl ... 778d3e6de3
The Mideast’s wealthiest countries depend on foreigners to do jobs their citizens won’t. But the virus has hobbled the arrangement and drawn attention to its inequities.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Kuwaiti talk show panelists were holding forth on an issue that the coronavirus has pushed to the forefront of national debate: whether their tiny, oil-rich monarchy should rely as heavily as it does on foreign laborers, who have suffered most of the country’s infections and borne much of the cost of its lockdown.
“Go to malls in Kuwait — would you ever see a Kuwaiti working there?” said one guest, Ahmad Baqer. “No. They’re all different nationalities.”
Not long after, a South Asian man slipped into the camera frame, serving tea to each panelist from a tray. He appeared three times during the program, his presence unacknowledged except by one panelist who waved away a fresh cup.
In the Middle East’s wealthiest societies, the machinery of daily life depends on migrant laborers from Asia, Africa and poorer Arab countries — millions of “tea boys,” housemaids, doctors, construction workers, deliverymen, chefs, garbagemen, guards, hairdressers, hoteliers and more, who often outnumber the native population.
They support families back home by doing the jobs citizens cannot or will not take. But as oil revenues plummet, migrant labor camps become coronavirus hot spots and citizens demand that their governments protect them first, the pandemic has prompted a reckoning with the status quo.
Hostility toward foreigners is growing louder. So are questions about how to replace migrants with citizens and calls for reforming the way foreign labor is imported and treated.
“The two things that Gulf countries depend on the most, oil prices and foreign workers, these two have been hard hit with the coronavirus,” said Eman Alhussein, a fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. “The coronavirus has unleashed all these issues that have been put on the back burner for a long time.”
For many of the Arab states’ foreign workers, who sent more than $124 billion to their home countries in 2017, the coronavirus’s fallout is bleakly straightforward.
Tens of thousands have lost their jobs during government-ordered lockdowns, leaving them to ration dwindling food supplies while their families struggle without their remittances. Others have fallen sick as the coronavirus tears through their meager, crowded dormitory-style housing.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/09/worl ... 778d3e6de3
Israel Announces Partnership With U.A.E., Which Throws Cold Water On It
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu touted a rare public opening between the two countries. Apparently, the Emirates was not ready for it.
TEL AVIV, Israel — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel announced a new partnership with the United Arab Emirates on Thursday to cooperate in the fight against the coronavirus, portraying it as the latest advance in the Jewish state’s efforts to build stronger ties with Arab states.
But Mr. Netanyahu’s ebullient description was contradicted a few hours later when the Emirates issued a much more muted statement, announcing what it described as an agreement between two private Emirati companies and two Israeli companies to develop technology to fight the virus.
The Emirati statement took the wind out of what Mr. Netanyahu had touted as a diplomatic coup, suggesting that despite the deepening ties, the two countries were still at odds over Mr. Netanyahu’s vow to annex parts of the occupied West Bank.
Addressing graduates at an air force base near Tel Aviv, Mr. Netanyahu spoke in grand terms of what he described as a new partnership that could benefit the broader Middle East.
“Our ability to work against the corona pandemic can also serve the entire region,” he said. “It creates opportunities for us for open cooperation that we have not known so far with certain countries.”
The partnership would include cooperation in research and development between the Israeli and Emirati health ministries in medical projects related to the coronavirus, he said.
To seal the deal, he said, the two ministries would announce the agreement “in a few moments.”
But it was unclear why the Emirates would agree to take such a public step at a time when Israel was drawing up plans to annex parts of the West Bank, a move that Arab countries, including the Emirates, have repeatedly denounced.
And four hours later, as Israeli officials stewed, the answer came in a Twitter posting from an Emirati Foreign Ministry spokeswoman.
“In light of strengthening international cooperation in the fields of research, development & technology in service of humanity, two private companies in U.A.E. sign an agreement with two companies in Israel to develop research technology to fight Covid-19,” wrote Hend al-Otaiba, the spokeswoman.
There was no mention of a state-to-state partnership between the two countries, which do not have diplomatic relations but whose ties have improved in recent years, and nothing about their health ministries.
It was unclear on Thursday whether the two countries had privately reached an agreement that came apart as it was coming to light, or what caused the daylight between the two announcements. But it seemed that Mr. Netanyahu’s annexation plans had made Emirati officials uncomfortable with such a public step toward Israel.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/25/worl ... 778d3e6de3
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu touted a rare public opening between the two countries. Apparently, the Emirates was not ready for it.
TEL AVIV, Israel — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel announced a new partnership with the United Arab Emirates on Thursday to cooperate in the fight against the coronavirus, portraying it as the latest advance in the Jewish state’s efforts to build stronger ties with Arab states.
But Mr. Netanyahu’s ebullient description was contradicted a few hours later when the Emirates issued a much more muted statement, announcing what it described as an agreement between two private Emirati companies and two Israeli companies to develop technology to fight the virus.
The Emirati statement took the wind out of what Mr. Netanyahu had touted as a diplomatic coup, suggesting that despite the deepening ties, the two countries were still at odds over Mr. Netanyahu’s vow to annex parts of the occupied West Bank.
Addressing graduates at an air force base near Tel Aviv, Mr. Netanyahu spoke in grand terms of what he described as a new partnership that could benefit the broader Middle East.
“Our ability to work against the corona pandemic can also serve the entire region,” he said. “It creates opportunities for us for open cooperation that we have not known so far with certain countries.”
The partnership would include cooperation in research and development between the Israeli and Emirati health ministries in medical projects related to the coronavirus, he said.
To seal the deal, he said, the two ministries would announce the agreement “in a few moments.”
But it was unclear why the Emirates would agree to take such a public step at a time when Israel was drawing up plans to annex parts of the West Bank, a move that Arab countries, including the Emirates, have repeatedly denounced.
And four hours later, as Israeli officials stewed, the answer came in a Twitter posting from an Emirati Foreign Ministry spokeswoman.
“In light of strengthening international cooperation in the fields of research, development & technology in service of humanity, two private companies in U.A.E. sign an agreement with two companies in Israel to develop research technology to fight Covid-19,” wrote Hend al-Otaiba, the spokeswoman.
There was no mention of a state-to-state partnership between the two countries, which do not have diplomatic relations but whose ties have improved in recent years, and nothing about their health ministries.
It was unclear on Thursday whether the two countries had privately reached an agreement that came apart as it was coming to light, or what caused the daylight between the two announcements. But it seemed that Mr. Netanyahu’s annexation plans had made Emirati officials uncomfortable with such a public step toward Israel.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/25/worl ... 778d3e6de3
Laid Off and Locked Up: Virus Traps Domestic Workers in Arab States
The pandemic and economic crises have caused many workers to lose their jobs. Some have been detained, abused, deprived of wages and stranded far from home with nowhere to turn for help.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — When the nine African women lost their jobs as domestic workers in Saudi Arabia because of the coronavirus lockdown, the agency that had recruited them stuffed them in a bare room with a few thin mattresses and locked the door.
Some have been there since March. One is now six months pregnant but receiving no maternity care. Another tore her clothes off in a fit of distress, so the agency chained her to a wall.
The women receive food once a day, they said, but don’t know when they will get out, much less be able to return to their countries.
“Everybody is fearing,” one of the women, Apisaki, from Kenya, said via WhatsApp. “The environment here is not good. No one will listen to our voice.”
Families in many Arab countries rely on millions of low-paid workers from Asia and Africa to drive their cars, clean their homes and care for their children and elderly relatives under conditions that rights groups have long said allow exploitation and abuse.
Now, the pandemic and associated economic downturns have exacerbated these dangers. Many families will not let their housekeepers leave the house, fearing they will bring back the virus, while requiring them to work more since entire families are staying home, workers’ advocates say.
Other workers have been laid off, deprived of wages and left stranded far from home with nowhere to turn for help.
In Lebanon, employers have deposited scores of Ethiopian women in front of their country’s consulate in Beirut because they could no longer pay them as the economy imploded.
Persian Gulf countries alone had nearly four million domestic laborers in 2016, more than half of them women, according to a study for the Abu Dhabi Dialogue, which focuses on migrant labor in the region. Experts say the real number has risen since and is probably much higher.
Hundreds of thousands of foreign housekeepers and nannies work in other Arab countries, including Lebanon and Jordan, giving the Arab world the most female domestic migrant workers of any region, according to the International Labor Organization.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/worl ... 778d3e6de3
The pandemic and economic crises have caused many workers to lose their jobs. Some have been detained, abused, deprived of wages and stranded far from home with nowhere to turn for help.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — When the nine African women lost their jobs as domestic workers in Saudi Arabia because of the coronavirus lockdown, the agency that had recruited them stuffed them in a bare room with a few thin mattresses and locked the door.
Some have been there since March. One is now six months pregnant but receiving no maternity care. Another tore her clothes off in a fit of distress, so the agency chained her to a wall.
The women receive food once a day, they said, but don’t know when they will get out, much less be able to return to their countries.
“Everybody is fearing,” one of the women, Apisaki, from Kenya, said via WhatsApp. “The environment here is not good. No one will listen to our voice.”
Families in many Arab countries rely on millions of low-paid workers from Asia and Africa to drive their cars, clean their homes and care for their children and elderly relatives under conditions that rights groups have long said allow exploitation and abuse.
Now, the pandemic and associated economic downturns have exacerbated these dangers. Many families will not let their housekeepers leave the house, fearing they will bring back the virus, while requiring them to work more since entire families are staying home, workers’ advocates say.
Other workers have been laid off, deprived of wages and left stranded far from home with nowhere to turn for help.
In Lebanon, employers have deposited scores of Ethiopian women in front of their country’s consulate in Beirut because they could no longer pay them as the economy imploded.
Persian Gulf countries alone had nearly four million domestic laborers in 2016, more than half of them women, according to a study for the Abu Dhabi Dialogue, which focuses on migrant labor in the region. Experts say the real number has risen since and is probably much higher.
Hundreds of thousands of foreign housekeepers and nannies work in other Arab countries, including Lebanon and Jordan, giving the Arab world the most female domestic migrant workers of any region, according to the International Labor Organization.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/worl ... 778d3e6de3
Lebanon Is Exhausted
The myth of their resilience helped the Lebanese function despite a miserably corrupt and inept state. No longer.
BEIRUT — Anyone who knows Lebanon has heard this: The Lebanese are resilient. A reputation earned by weathering an outsize list of challenges over the years: a 15-year civil war, political tensions with Syria, wars with Israel and a collapsing public service infrastructure.
Economic collapse, exacerbated by a coronavirus lockdown in March, is the latest disaster to befall the Lebanese people. Years of financial maneuvering and debt mismanagement by the government, the banks and the central bank led to a depletion of the country’s foreign currency reserves, which caused depreciation of the Lebanese pound — long pegged to the dollar — by more than 80 percent since October.
People have lost their life savings overnight, and prices of food and basic goods have inflated over 50 percent for the third month in a row, making Lebanon the first country in the Middle East and North Africa region to experience hyperinflation.
Lebanon’s economy is based on services; the country produces little and imports a lot. The plummeting value of the Lebanese lira and the lack of access to dollars means many stores can’t afford to remain open. Salaries that haven’t been slashed outright have lost their spending power. Tourism, once one of the pillars of the economy, has been severely hit in recent months from the worsening political and economic situation and the enforced pandemic lockdown.
Nearly 1,000 restaurants have been forced to close, and 25,000 people have lost their jobs in the restaurant sector alone. Remittances, which once brought enough dollars into the country to help offset the budget deficit, have been on the wane for some years now because of lower oil prices in the Gulf, where many Lebanese work. Data for 2020 is still not in, but remittances are set to dwindle more as a lack of trust in the banks and travel restrictions mean money cannot find its way into the country either through bank or in-person transfers.
The cumulative effect of these factors is that much of the middle class — about 3.25 million people, or 65 percent of the country — has slipped into poverty. The poor are now destitute, near starvation. Once again, people must scramble to find solutions for the government’s ills.
Facebook barter groups have sprung up, with people seeking to exchange whatever they have, in order to secure what they so desperately need: fancy dresses for baby formula; a set of drinking glasses for a bag of rice. One man held up a pharmacy for diapers. Another mugged someone at knife point only to return, sobbing and apologizing that he is unable to feed his family, that he’s only doing this to survive.
While the mass protests that erupted on Oct. 17, 2019 — against the corruption of the ruling elite and the sectarian system they uphold — succeeded in toppling the government, the new government appointed in its place has done little to alleviate or address worsening living conditions.
Misery is now palpable across the country, in the rows of shuttered shops, in the garbage piling up in different neighborhoods as basic services are disrupted, and in the darkness of the nighttime streets of Beirut as electricity cuts soar to 20 hours a day.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/opin ... 778d3e6de3
The myth of their resilience helped the Lebanese function despite a miserably corrupt and inept state. No longer.
BEIRUT — Anyone who knows Lebanon has heard this: The Lebanese are resilient. A reputation earned by weathering an outsize list of challenges over the years: a 15-year civil war, political tensions with Syria, wars with Israel and a collapsing public service infrastructure.
Economic collapse, exacerbated by a coronavirus lockdown in March, is the latest disaster to befall the Lebanese people. Years of financial maneuvering and debt mismanagement by the government, the banks and the central bank led to a depletion of the country’s foreign currency reserves, which caused depreciation of the Lebanese pound — long pegged to the dollar — by more than 80 percent since October.
People have lost their life savings overnight, and prices of food and basic goods have inflated over 50 percent for the third month in a row, making Lebanon the first country in the Middle East and North Africa region to experience hyperinflation.
Lebanon’s economy is based on services; the country produces little and imports a lot. The plummeting value of the Lebanese lira and the lack of access to dollars means many stores can’t afford to remain open. Salaries that haven’t been slashed outright have lost their spending power. Tourism, once one of the pillars of the economy, has been severely hit in recent months from the worsening political and economic situation and the enforced pandemic lockdown.
Nearly 1,000 restaurants have been forced to close, and 25,000 people have lost their jobs in the restaurant sector alone. Remittances, which once brought enough dollars into the country to help offset the budget deficit, have been on the wane for some years now because of lower oil prices in the Gulf, where many Lebanese work. Data for 2020 is still not in, but remittances are set to dwindle more as a lack of trust in the banks and travel restrictions mean money cannot find its way into the country either through bank or in-person transfers.
The cumulative effect of these factors is that much of the middle class — about 3.25 million people, or 65 percent of the country — has slipped into poverty. The poor are now destitute, near starvation. Once again, people must scramble to find solutions for the government’s ills.
Facebook barter groups have sprung up, with people seeking to exchange whatever they have, in order to secure what they so desperately need: fancy dresses for baby formula; a set of drinking glasses for a bag of rice. One man held up a pharmacy for diapers. Another mugged someone at knife point only to return, sobbing and apologizing that he is unable to feed his family, that he’s only doing this to survive.
While the mass protests that erupted on Oct. 17, 2019 — against the corruption of the ruling elite and the sectarian system they uphold — succeeded in toppling the government, the new government appointed in its place has done little to alleviate or address worsening living conditions.
Misery is now palpable across the country, in the rows of shuttered shops, in the garbage piling up in different neighborhoods as basic services are disrupted, and in the darkness of the nighttime streets of Beirut as electricity cuts soar to 20 hours a day.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/opin ... 778d3e6de3
A Geopolitical Earthquake Just Hit the Mideast
The Israel-United Arab Emirates deal will be felt throughout the region.
President Trump, with officials from Israel and the United Arab Emirates, on Thursday announced an accord between the two Mideast countries.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
For once, I am going to agree with President Trump in his use of his favorite adjective: “huge.”
The agreement brokered by the Trump administration for the United Arab Emirates to establish full normalization of relations with Israel, in return for the Jewish state forgoing, for now, any annexation of the West Bank, was exactly what Trump said it was in his tweet: a “HUGE breakthrough.”
It is not Anwar el-Sadat going to Jerusalem — nothing could match that first big opening between Arabs and Israelis. It is not Yasir Arafat shaking Yitzhak Rabin’s hand on the White House lawn — nothing could match that first moment of public reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.
But it is close. Just go down the scorecard, and you see how this deal affects every major party in the region — with those in the pro-American, pro-moderate Islam, pro-ending-the-conflict-with-Israel-once-and-for-all camp benefiting the most and those in the radical pro-Iran, anti-American, pro-Islamist permanent-struggle-with-Israel camp all becoming more isolated and left behind.
It’s a geopolitical earthquake.
To fully appreciate why, you need to start with the internal dynamics of the deal. It was Trump’s peace plan drawn up by Jared Kushner, and their willingness to stick with it, that actually created the raw material for this breakthrough. Here is how.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/opin ... ogin-email
The Israel-United Arab Emirates deal will be felt throughout the region.
President Trump, with officials from Israel and the United Arab Emirates, on Thursday announced an accord between the two Mideast countries.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
For once, I am going to agree with President Trump in his use of his favorite adjective: “huge.”
The agreement brokered by the Trump administration for the United Arab Emirates to establish full normalization of relations with Israel, in return for the Jewish state forgoing, for now, any annexation of the West Bank, was exactly what Trump said it was in his tweet: a “HUGE breakthrough.”
It is not Anwar el-Sadat going to Jerusalem — nothing could match that first big opening between Arabs and Israelis. It is not Yasir Arafat shaking Yitzhak Rabin’s hand on the White House lawn — nothing could match that first moment of public reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.
But it is close. Just go down the scorecard, and you see how this deal affects every major party in the region — with those in the pro-American, pro-moderate Islam, pro-ending-the-conflict-with-Israel-once-and-for-all camp benefiting the most and those in the radical pro-Iran, anti-American, pro-Islamist permanent-struggle-with-Israel camp all becoming more isolated and left behind.
It’s a geopolitical earthquake.
To fully appreciate why, you need to start with the internal dynamics of the deal. It was Trump’s peace plan drawn up by Jared Kushner, and their willingness to stick with it, that actually created the raw material for this breakthrough. Here is how.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/opin ... ogin-email
For Palestinians, Israel-U.A.E. Deal Swaps One Nightmare for Another
With annexation of the West Bank off the table and Arab diplomacy turned inside out, the Palestinian struggle, once focused against Israel, now is to remain relevant.
Tel Aviv City Hall was lit up with the flag of the United Arab Emirates as Israel and the Emirates announced full diplomatic ties.Credit...Oded Balilty/Associated Press
JERUSALEM — When the unmarked United Arab Emirates plane touched down on the tarmac in Tel Aviv one night in May carrying 16 tons of unsolicited medical aid for the Palestinians, it was rejected by the Palestinian leadership, which said that nobody had coordinated with them about the shipment.
That was just a prelude to a greater humiliation. Palestinian officials maintain that nobody consulted with them before Thursday’s surprise announcement by President Trump that Israel and the Emirates had agreed to “full normalization of relations” in exchange for Israel’s suspending annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank.
If the pullback from annexation was presented as some kind of a balm for the Palestinians, many of them considered it, instead, a stab in the back. The deal was a diplomatic coup for Israel, but it ruptured decades of professed Arab unity around the Palestinian cause. It swapped one Palestinian nightmare — annexation, which many world leaders had warned would be an illegal land grab — for another, perhaps even bleaker prospect of not being counted at all.
“This agreement is very damaging to the cause of peace,” said Husam Zomlot, the head of the Palestinian mission to the United Kingdom, speaking from London, “because it takes away one of the key incentives for Israel to end its occupation — normalization with the Arab world.”
“It basically tells Israel it can have peace with an Arab country,” he added, “in return for postponing illegal theft of Palestinian land.”
Friday’s front pages blared out the disconnect. Israel’s popular Yediot Ahronot celebrated the “historic agreement” and the cut-price deal of “Peace in Exchange for Annexation.” But the Palestinian government-run Al-Hayat al-Jadida went with “Tripartite Aggression against the Rights of the Palestinian People,” in angry red letters.
The emerging Israeli-Emirati relationship is the most prominent achievement yet of what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has called an outside-in approach. That has entailed courting the Gulf States — including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman as well as the Emirates — to quietly come to terms with Israel and then bring along the Palestinians, rather than dealing with the Palestinians first.
The conservative-led Israeli government has long viewed the Palestinians as intransigent, and unwilling or unable to compromise on long-held principles that Israel sees as inflated demands, casting them as serial quitters of peace talks.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/worl ... 778d3e6de3
With annexation of the West Bank off the table and Arab diplomacy turned inside out, the Palestinian struggle, once focused against Israel, now is to remain relevant.
Tel Aviv City Hall was lit up with the flag of the United Arab Emirates as Israel and the Emirates announced full diplomatic ties.Credit...Oded Balilty/Associated Press
JERUSALEM — When the unmarked United Arab Emirates plane touched down on the tarmac in Tel Aviv one night in May carrying 16 tons of unsolicited medical aid for the Palestinians, it was rejected by the Palestinian leadership, which said that nobody had coordinated with them about the shipment.
That was just a prelude to a greater humiliation. Palestinian officials maintain that nobody consulted with them before Thursday’s surprise announcement by President Trump that Israel and the Emirates had agreed to “full normalization of relations” in exchange for Israel’s suspending annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank.
If the pullback from annexation was presented as some kind of a balm for the Palestinians, many of them considered it, instead, a stab in the back. The deal was a diplomatic coup for Israel, but it ruptured decades of professed Arab unity around the Palestinian cause. It swapped one Palestinian nightmare — annexation, which many world leaders had warned would be an illegal land grab — for another, perhaps even bleaker prospect of not being counted at all.
“This agreement is very damaging to the cause of peace,” said Husam Zomlot, the head of the Palestinian mission to the United Kingdom, speaking from London, “because it takes away one of the key incentives for Israel to end its occupation — normalization with the Arab world.”
“It basically tells Israel it can have peace with an Arab country,” he added, “in return for postponing illegal theft of Palestinian land.”
Friday’s front pages blared out the disconnect. Israel’s popular Yediot Ahronot celebrated the “historic agreement” and the cut-price deal of “Peace in Exchange for Annexation.” But the Palestinian government-run Al-Hayat al-Jadida went with “Tripartite Aggression against the Rights of the Palestinian People,” in angry red letters.
The emerging Israeli-Emirati relationship is the most prominent achievement yet of what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has called an outside-in approach. That has entailed courting the Gulf States — including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman as well as the Emirates — to quietly come to terms with Israel and then bring along the Palestinians, rather than dealing with the Palestinians first.
The conservative-led Israeli government has long viewed the Palestinians as intransigent, and unwilling or unable to compromise on long-held principles that Israel sees as inflated demands, casting them as serial quitters of peace talks.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/worl ... 778d3e6de3
Bahrain Will Normalize Relations With Israel, in Deal Brokered by Trump
The island kingdom in the Persian Gulf becomes the second Arab nation in a month to more openly embrace Israel, dismissing Palestinian objections.
WASHINGTON — President Trump announced on Friday that Bahrain would establish full diplomatic relations with Israel, following the United Arab Emirates, in another sign of shifting Middle East dynamics that are bringing Arab nations closer to Israel.
Mr. Trump announced the news on Twitter, releasing a joint statement with Bahrain and Israel and calling the move “a historic breakthrough to further peace in the Middle East.” Speaking to reporters, the president said the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks was a fitting day for the announcement.
“There’s no more powerful response to the hatred that spawned 9/11,” he said.
The announcement came after a similar one last month by Israel and the United Arab Emirates that they would normalize relations, on the condition that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel not follow through with plans to annex portions of the West Bank. Trump administration officials said they hoped that agreement would encourage other Arab countries with historically hostile — though recently thawing — relations with Israel to take similar steps.
The deal, which isolates the Palestinians, comes as Mr. Trump tries to position himself as a peacemaker before the elections in November.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/11/worl ... 778d3e6de3
The island kingdom in the Persian Gulf becomes the second Arab nation in a month to more openly embrace Israel, dismissing Palestinian objections.
WASHINGTON — President Trump announced on Friday that Bahrain would establish full diplomatic relations with Israel, following the United Arab Emirates, in another sign of shifting Middle East dynamics that are bringing Arab nations closer to Israel.
Mr. Trump announced the news on Twitter, releasing a joint statement with Bahrain and Israel and calling the move “a historic breakthrough to further peace in the Middle East.” Speaking to reporters, the president said the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks was a fitting day for the announcement.
“There’s no more powerful response to the hatred that spawned 9/11,” he said.
The announcement came after a similar one last month by Israel and the United Arab Emirates that they would normalize relations, on the condition that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel not follow through with plans to annex portions of the West Bank. Trump administration officials said they hoped that agreement would encourage other Arab countries with historically hostile — though recently thawing — relations with Israel to take similar steps.
The deal, which isolates the Palestinians, comes as Mr. Trump tries to position himself as a peacemaker before the elections in November.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/11/worl ... 778d3e6de3
In Arab States’ Embrace, Israelis See a Reshaped Mideast
Normalized ties with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain raise hopes in Israel that it is finally gaining acceptance in its volatile neighborhood.
JERUSALEM — Since its founding, Israel has seen itself as a modern-day Sparta, a tiny fortress nation-state in a hostile desert, whose survival depended on its internal cohesion and sheer military strength.
All around it were Arab and Muslim enemies who denounced the Jewish state as a colonizing interloper, an outpost of foreign intruders who were bound to be evicted, sooner or later, like all their predecessors back to the Crusaders.
But Israel’s back-to-back agreements to normalize ties with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, to be marked in a signing ceremony at the White House on Tuesday — and the much-buzzed-about possibility that other Arab nations could follow suit — are causing some Israelis to ask whether a deeper shift may, after years in the making, finally be underway in the Middle East.
Could their country at last be gaining acceptance in the region as a legitimate member of the neighborhood?
Formal diplomatic relations will mean a great deal to Israel after its long wait in isolation: the exchange of ambassadors, establishment of direct flights, new destinations for tourists once travel becomes possible again and the start or acceleration of a host of other commercial, cultural and scientific endeavors that until now could be conducted only in the shadows.
But Dr. Yitshak Kreiss, director general of Sheba Medical Center, Israel’s largest hospital, and a former military surgeon general, said that the biggest impact could be in changing the way ordinary Israelis think about their place in the region.
In an interview, Dr. Kreiss recalled setting up a field hospital in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake there. It could treat only a small fraction of the injured, but it had a great impact because “the most important thing for nations in a crisis is hope, the feeling that there’s a better future,” he said.
“When Israelis see the region opening, it doesn’t matter if it’s the Emirates or Bahrain, and next are Chad, or Oman, or Sudan, or Saudi Arabia,” Dr. Kreiss continued. “It’s the understanding that this can be a better region, that we should not accept things as they are. This is the strongest feeling Israelis can take from that.”
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/13/worl ... 778d3e6de3
Normalized ties with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain raise hopes in Israel that it is finally gaining acceptance in its volatile neighborhood.
JERUSALEM — Since its founding, Israel has seen itself as a modern-day Sparta, a tiny fortress nation-state in a hostile desert, whose survival depended on its internal cohesion and sheer military strength.
All around it were Arab and Muslim enemies who denounced the Jewish state as a colonizing interloper, an outpost of foreign intruders who were bound to be evicted, sooner or later, like all their predecessors back to the Crusaders.
But Israel’s back-to-back agreements to normalize ties with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, to be marked in a signing ceremony at the White House on Tuesday — and the much-buzzed-about possibility that other Arab nations could follow suit — are causing some Israelis to ask whether a deeper shift may, after years in the making, finally be underway in the Middle East.
Could their country at last be gaining acceptance in the region as a legitimate member of the neighborhood?
Formal diplomatic relations will mean a great deal to Israel after its long wait in isolation: the exchange of ambassadors, establishment of direct flights, new destinations for tourists once travel becomes possible again and the start or acceleration of a host of other commercial, cultural and scientific endeavors that until now could be conducted only in the shadows.
But Dr. Yitshak Kreiss, director general of Sheba Medical Center, Israel’s largest hospital, and a former military surgeon general, said that the biggest impact could be in changing the way ordinary Israelis think about their place in the region.
In an interview, Dr. Kreiss recalled setting up a field hospital in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake there. It could treat only a small fraction of the injured, but it had a great impact because “the most important thing for nations in a crisis is hope, the feeling that there’s a better future,” he said.
“When Israelis see the region opening, it doesn’t matter if it’s the Emirates or Bahrain, and next are Chad, or Oman, or Sudan, or Saudi Arabia,” Dr. Kreiss continued. “It’s the understanding that this can be a better region, that we should not accept things as they are. This is the strongest feeling Israelis can take from that.”
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/13/worl ... 778d3e6de3
A Rare Middle East Triumph
And — yes — a triumph for Trump, too.
The flags of the U.S., the United Arab Emirates, Israel and Bahrain flew along a road in Israel on Monday.Credit...Nir Elias/Reuters
For years, the Trump administration’s peacemaking efforts in the Middle East have been the object of relentless derision in elite foreign-policy circles, some of it justified. Yet with Friday’s announcement that Bahrain would join the United Arab Emirates as the second Arab state in 30 days to normalize ties with Israel, the administration has done more for regional peace than most of its predecessors, including an Obama administration that tried hard and failed badly.
There are lessons in this, at least for anyone prepared to consider just how wrong a half-century’s worth of conventional wisdom has been.
At the heart of that conventional wisdom is the view, succinctly put by U.N. Secretary General António Guterres in February, that “resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains key to sustainable peace in the Middle East.” Untie that Gordian knot, so the thinking goes, and the region’s many problems become easier to solve, whether it’s other regional conflicts or the anti-Americanism that feeds international terrorism.
That thinking was always dubious — what, for instance, did the Iran-Iraq War, in which a million people or more died, have to do with Israelis and Palestinians? — though it had the convenience of giving Arab regimes a good way of deflecting blame for their own bad governance. But since the (misnamed) Arab Spring began nearly a decade ago, the view has become absurd.
The rise and fall of ISIS, civil war in Syria and anarchy in Libya, Turkey’s aggression against Kurds, proxy battles and hunger in Yemen, political turmoil and repression in Egypt and Iran, the bankruptcy of the Lebanese state, the plight of Middle Eastern refugees — if any of these catastrophes have something in common, it’s that they have next to nothing to do with the Jewish state or its policies. One may still hope for a Palestinian state, but it won’t save the region from itself.
What would? The best option is an alliance of moderates and modernizers — anyone in power (or seeking power) who wants to move his country in the direction of greater religious and social tolerance, broader (that is, beyond energy) economic development, less preoccupation with ancient disputes, more interest in future opportunities. Such an alliance is the only hope for a region being sucked into the maw of religious fanaticism, economic stagnation, environmental degradation and perpetual misrule.
Now this alliance may finally be coming into being. Unlike Israel’s peace with Egypt and Jordan — both based on strategic necessity and geographic proximity — the peace with the Emirates and Bahrain has no obvious rationale, even if a shared fear of Iran played a role.
The larger factor is shared aspiration. Israel is the most advanced country in the region because for seven decades it invested in human, not mineral, potential, and because it didn’t let its wounds (whether with respect to Germany in the 1950s or Egypt in the 1970s) get the better of its judgment.
The choice for the Arab world is stark. It can follow a similar path as Israel; be swallowed by Iran, China, Russia, Turkey or some other outsider; or otherwise continue as before until, Libya-like, it implodes.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/14/opin ... 778d3e6de3
And — yes — a triumph for Trump, too.
The flags of the U.S., the United Arab Emirates, Israel and Bahrain flew along a road in Israel on Monday.Credit...Nir Elias/Reuters
For years, the Trump administration’s peacemaking efforts in the Middle East have been the object of relentless derision in elite foreign-policy circles, some of it justified. Yet with Friday’s announcement that Bahrain would join the United Arab Emirates as the second Arab state in 30 days to normalize ties with Israel, the administration has done more for regional peace than most of its predecessors, including an Obama administration that tried hard and failed badly.
There are lessons in this, at least for anyone prepared to consider just how wrong a half-century’s worth of conventional wisdom has been.
At the heart of that conventional wisdom is the view, succinctly put by U.N. Secretary General António Guterres in February, that “resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains key to sustainable peace in the Middle East.” Untie that Gordian knot, so the thinking goes, and the region’s many problems become easier to solve, whether it’s other regional conflicts or the anti-Americanism that feeds international terrorism.
That thinking was always dubious — what, for instance, did the Iran-Iraq War, in which a million people or more died, have to do with Israelis and Palestinians? — though it had the convenience of giving Arab regimes a good way of deflecting blame for their own bad governance. But since the (misnamed) Arab Spring began nearly a decade ago, the view has become absurd.
The rise and fall of ISIS, civil war in Syria and anarchy in Libya, Turkey’s aggression against Kurds, proxy battles and hunger in Yemen, political turmoil and repression in Egypt and Iran, the bankruptcy of the Lebanese state, the plight of Middle Eastern refugees — if any of these catastrophes have something in common, it’s that they have next to nothing to do with the Jewish state or its policies. One may still hope for a Palestinian state, but it won’t save the region from itself.
What would? The best option is an alliance of moderates and modernizers — anyone in power (or seeking power) who wants to move his country in the direction of greater religious and social tolerance, broader (that is, beyond energy) economic development, less preoccupation with ancient disputes, more interest in future opportunities. Such an alliance is the only hope for a region being sucked into the maw of religious fanaticism, economic stagnation, environmental degradation and perpetual misrule.
Now this alliance may finally be coming into being. Unlike Israel’s peace with Egypt and Jordan — both based on strategic necessity and geographic proximity — the peace with the Emirates and Bahrain has no obvious rationale, even if a shared fear of Iran played a role.
The larger factor is shared aspiration. Israel is the most advanced country in the region because for seven decades it invested in human, not mineral, potential, and because it didn’t let its wounds (whether with respect to Germany in the 1950s or Egypt in the 1970s) get the better of its judgment.
The choice for the Arab world is stark. It can follow a similar path as Israel; be swallowed by Iran, China, Russia, Turkey or some other outsider; or otherwise continue as before until, Libya-like, it implodes.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/14/opin ... 778d3e6de3
SEPTEMBER 20, 2020
Arab cultural narcissism
Pervez Hoodbhoy Updated 19 Sep 2020
PETRO-GIANT countries of the Arab world may not be terribly well known for perspicacious scholarship or prowess in scientific research but their one-upmanship knows no limits.
The United Arab Emirates is presently stealing the show: the Emirates Mars Mission’s successful July 2020 launch means it will rendezvous with the Red Planet in six months; UAE cities have spectacular skylines premiering the worlds’ tallest and most stunning buildings; and the world’s top airline is called Emirates. There’s every kind of futuristic gimmickry: the world’s first minister of artificial intelligence, 27-year-old Sultan Al Olama, was just appointed under UAE’s Centennial 2071 plan.
Close on UAE’s heels are other GCC countries with Saudi Arabia having started the construction of Neom, a futuristic megacity deep in the desert bordering the Red Sea. Costing $500 billion upward, it will feature artificial rain, a fake moon, robotic maids, flying taxis, and holographic teachers. Qatar plans to spend over $220bn while hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Twelve solar-cooled super-stadiums holding around 50,000 spectators each are nearing completion.
Private scorn accompanies these humongous public spectacles. What’s Arab about all this? Expats flown in from around the globe run the show. They range from domestic servants to truck drivers and from famous architects to top-of-the-line space-travel engineers. The relationship is purely transactional: petrodollars buy brains, brawn and gadgets.
Arab and Pakistani cultures remain self-congratulatory even eight centuries after Islam’s Golden Age ended.
But, knowing the oil will eventually dry out, some GCC Arab rulers are realising that theirs is a road to nowhere. Beating the drum of past glories and education of the usual religious kind will doom them to remain consumers and supplicants. And so, at least at first glance, they seem to be doing everything right and are throwing tons of money at it.
Education from the primary class to university is free in all state institutions. New Arab universities are aplenty with several US universities having Arab campuses to which famous foreign professors are lured with incredible pay packages. Laboratories are stuffed with scientific equipment and every kind of infrastructure is there for the asking.
Is it working? Has a culture of learning and scholarship developed? Nature, a highly respected science journal, has effusive praise. A recent article in its Middle Eastern edition, ‘The Rise of Saudi Arabia as a Science Powerhouse’ describes Saudi Arabia as “West Asia’s second most scientifically productive country after Israel”. Other GCC countries have shot up in world rankings as well. The sole criterion used is the number of research papers published from universities.
But with 20 different ways of getting your name onto a paper in the internet age, and with foreign visitors flown in just for lending their prestigious names to a paper, making large claims based upon small evidence is unwise. Nature’s normal objectivity was likely influenced by political and financial considerations. The astonishing conclusion of “science powerhouse” is unsupported by other evidence.
Unesco’s Science Report, for example, was far more cautious. It observed that in most Arab countries, “the education system is still not turning out graduates who are motivated to contribute to a healthier economy”. University professors returning from teaching stints in GCC countries agree. They complain about the indifference, apathy, poor work ethic, and lack of curiosity among their students. Reading habits are undeveloped. Most students opt for ‘soft’ areas like marketing, banking and management with few going for more intellectually demanding and rigorous disciplines.
At the heart of this is Arab attitudes towards knowledge and learning. Centuries after the end of Islam’s Golden Age (9th to 13th centuries), Arab culture is self-absorbed and centred on self-congratulation. Convinced that it possesses the only true religion and that Arabic is the most perfect language, it claims eternal monopoly over truth. That’s narcissism on a civilisational scale.
Narcissus, as the reader knows, is a Greek legendary figure who fell deliriously in love with himself and disdained all around him. In anger the goddess Nemesis punished him by obsessing him with his reflection in the stream. So lovely was the bloom of his youth that he could not walk away from himself. And so Narcissus wasted away and died.
A similar tragedy befalls cultures lost in self-love. They lose vitality because there is little desire to interact and mingle with other peoples or to move with the times. Many young Arabs today take this lazy route. They disdain intellectual pursuits, thinking that modern accomplishments are only a pale reflection of the foundational works of their Muslim ancestors.
This is delusionary. Science and learning came from all humankind and existed in civilisations long preceding Islam. Ancient Babylonian and Egyptian science started 3,000 to 4,000 years ago and the Chinese, Indian and Greek civilisations were extremely fertile as well. Relatively speaking, science in Islam was a latecomer that began with the translation of Greek works about 150 years after the death of the Holy Prophet (PBUH). Muslims added many new and brilliant ideas but their science is just one part of pre-modern science.
Some signs of hope are finally emerging in the Arab world. The abject failure to modernise — except very superficially — is making GCC countries realise that insularity won’t work. Several are moving up the learning curve and absorbing universal values by allowing wider media access and more personal freedoms for citizens, particularly for women. While the trend towards recognising Netanyahu’s Israel smacks of defeatism and sells out Palestinian interests, the decrease in anti-Semitic propaganda augurs well for all.
Bucking progressive trends in the Arab world, Pakistan is busy manufacturing new narcissistic illusions. Lacking the will to address urban chaos (as in Karachi) or to generate significant employment, it seeks solace through concocting a Turkic-Islamic past and heaping adoration upon the fictionalised Ertugrul drama series. Now watched daily by millions, it is a new form of escapism.
Evidence for a further closing of the Pakistani mind is starkly visible. Absent from our school curriculum is the study of world history, philosophy, epistemology, or comparative religions. In PTI’s Single National Curriculum, rote learning has massively increased, as has religious content. The brains of our schoolchildren are being programmed for a world other than the one they live in.
The writer is an Islamabad-based physicist and writer.
Published in Dawn, September 19th, 2020
https://www.dawn.com/news/1580482/arab- ... narcissism
Arab cultural narcissism
Pervez Hoodbhoy Updated 19 Sep 2020
PETRO-GIANT countries of the Arab world may not be terribly well known for perspicacious scholarship or prowess in scientific research but their one-upmanship knows no limits.
The United Arab Emirates is presently stealing the show: the Emirates Mars Mission’s successful July 2020 launch means it will rendezvous with the Red Planet in six months; UAE cities have spectacular skylines premiering the worlds’ tallest and most stunning buildings; and the world’s top airline is called Emirates. There’s every kind of futuristic gimmickry: the world’s first minister of artificial intelligence, 27-year-old Sultan Al Olama, was just appointed under UAE’s Centennial 2071 plan.
Close on UAE’s heels are other GCC countries with Saudi Arabia having started the construction of Neom, a futuristic megacity deep in the desert bordering the Red Sea. Costing $500 billion upward, it will feature artificial rain, a fake moon, robotic maids, flying taxis, and holographic teachers. Qatar plans to spend over $220bn while hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Twelve solar-cooled super-stadiums holding around 50,000 spectators each are nearing completion.
Private scorn accompanies these humongous public spectacles. What’s Arab about all this? Expats flown in from around the globe run the show. They range from domestic servants to truck drivers and from famous architects to top-of-the-line space-travel engineers. The relationship is purely transactional: petrodollars buy brains, brawn and gadgets.
Arab and Pakistani cultures remain self-congratulatory even eight centuries after Islam’s Golden Age ended.
But, knowing the oil will eventually dry out, some GCC Arab rulers are realising that theirs is a road to nowhere. Beating the drum of past glories and education of the usual religious kind will doom them to remain consumers and supplicants. And so, at least at first glance, they seem to be doing everything right and are throwing tons of money at it.
Education from the primary class to university is free in all state institutions. New Arab universities are aplenty with several US universities having Arab campuses to which famous foreign professors are lured with incredible pay packages. Laboratories are stuffed with scientific equipment and every kind of infrastructure is there for the asking.
Is it working? Has a culture of learning and scholarship developed? Nature, a highly respected science journal, has effusive praise. A recent article in its Middle Eastern edition, ‘The Rise of Saudi Arabia as a Science Powerhouse’ describes Saudi Arabia as “West Asia’s second most scientifically productive country after Israel”. Other GCC countries have shot up in world rankings as well. The sole criterion used is the number of research papers published from universities.
But with 20 different ways of getting your name onto a paper in the internet age, and with foreign visitors flown in just for lending their prestigious names to a paper, making large claims based upon small evidence is unwise. Nature’s normal objectivity was likely influenced by political and financial considerations. The astonishing conclusion of “science powerhouse” is unsupported by other evidence.
Unesco’s Science Report, for example, was far more cautious. It observed that in most Arab countries, “the education system is still not turning out graduates who are motivated to contribute to a healthier economy”. University professors returning from teaching stints in GCC countries agree. They complain about the indifference, apathy, poor work ethic, and lack of curiosity among their students. Reading habits are undeveloped. Most students opt for ‘soft’ areas like marketing, banking and management with few going for more intellectually demanding and rigorous disciplines.
At the heart of this is Arab attitudes towards knowledge and learning. Centuries after the end of Islam’s Golden Age (9th to 13th centuries), Arab culture is self-absorbed and centred on self-congratulation. Convinced that it possesses the only true religion and that Arabic is the most perfect language, it claims eternal monopoly over truth. That’s narcissism on a civilisational scale.
Narcissus, as the reader knows, is a Greek legendary figure who fell deliriously in love with himself and disdained all around him. In anger the goddess Nemesis punished him by obsessing him with his reflection in the stream. So lovely was the bloom of his youth that he could not walk away from himself. And so Narcissus wasted away and died.
A similar tragedy befalls cultures lost in self-love. They lose vitality because there is little desire to interact and mingle with other peoples or to move with the times. Many young Arabs today take this lazy route. They disdain intellectual pursuits, thinking that modern accomplishments are only a pale reflection of the foundational works of their Muslim ancestors.
This is delusionary. Science and learning came from all humankind and existed in civilisations long preceding Islam. Ancient Babylonian and Egyptian science started 3,000 to 4,000 years ago and the Chinese, Indian and Greek civilisations were extremely fertile as well. Relatively speaking, science in Islam was a latecomer that began with the translation of Greek works about 150 years after the death of the Holy Prophet (PBUH). Muslims added many new and brilliant ideas but their science is just one part of pre-modern science.
Some signs of hope are finally emerging in the Arab world. The abject failure to modernise — except very superficially — is making GCC countries realise that insularity won’t work. Several are moving up the learning curve and absorbing universal values by allowing wider media access and more personal freedoms for citizens, particularly for women. While the trend towards recognising Netanyahu’s Israel smacks of defeatism and sells out Palestinian interests, the decrease in anti-Semitic propaganda augurs well for all.
Bucking progressive trends in the Arab world, Pakistan is busy manufacturing new narcissistic illusions. Lacking the will to address urban chaos (as in Karachi) or to generate significant employment, it seeks solace through concocting a Turkic-Islamic past and heaping adoration upon the fictionalised Ertugrul drama series. Now watched daily by millions, it is a new form of escapism.
Evidence for a further closing of the Pakistani mind is starkly visible. Absent from our school curriculum is the study of world history, philosophy, epistemology, or comparative religions. In PTI’s Single National Curriculum, rote learning has massively increased, as has religious content. The brains of our schoolchildren are being programmed for a world other than the one they live in.
The writer is an Islamabad-based physicist and writer.
Published in Dawn, September 19th, 2020
https://www.dawn.com/news/1580482/arab- ... narcissism
The New Alliance Shaping the Middle East Is Against a Tiny Bug
Israeli sensors on the Persian Gulf, across the water from Iran, are part of an epic battle in the Middle East. Just not the one we’re used to.
Dates in the Middle East are like corn for the Maya — not just a crop but an icon, the “bread of the desert,” a symbol of life itself. The date palm appears on mosaic floors laid by Roman artisans and on coins stamped by the early caliphs. The fruit recurs in the Quran and the Hebrew Bible: Many scholars believe the honey in “land of milk and honey” refers to honey from dates, not bees.
With their long shelf life, dates were beloved by Arabian nomads and caravan traders, and are still eaten to break the Ramadan fast. In Israel the name Tamar, which means “date” and appears in the Book of Genesis, remains the most popular Hebrew name for girls. (I have a daughter named Tamar who doesn’t like dates.) At desert oases and in small holdings along the Nile, the same trees might support the same family over generations.
There’s the Middle East of the news, a region of nuclear proliferation, civil wars and futile diplomacy. Then there’s the Middle East of dates — a map defined not by national boundaries but by the stately trees in their hundreds of millions, stretching east from the Atlantic coast of Morocco through North Africa, Egypt and Israel, to Iraq and the Persian Gulf toward Iran and beyond.
The Middle East of the news saw a striking political shift at the end of last year, produced by the efforts of American envoys and by new perceptions of common enemies. In the date world, too, there’s a new alignment afoot. This change has nothing to do with American diplomats or Iranian Revolutionary Guards. But it, too, involves a common enemy and is undermining the familiar boundaries, creating new connections among the people who live here and restoring others that once existed and were lost. These stories intersect in the emirate of Dubai.
Past a camel racetrack 30 miles inland from the Persian Gulf, skyscrapers looming in the distance like Oz, past a desert turnoff adorned with a portrait of this emirate’s ruler, Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, is one orchard of 1,500 palms. The owner is Abdalla Ahli, 59, a native of Dubai who attended the University of Delaware. He greeted me in a traditional robe (the thawb) and a matching baseball hat (Lacoste). Mr. Ahli keeps a few emus in a pen and owns larger farms deeper in the interior. The dates he grows here are a compact, chewy kind called khalas, some of the best I’ve eaten. The total number of trees in the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is part, is sometimes estimated at 40 million, though even the government doesn’t know exactly.
It doesn’t take long in the shade of Mr. Ahli’s green fronds to see that something’s wrong. Many of the trees have strange holes in their trunks, and some are so thoroughly riddled they appear to have been sprayed with bullets. Amid the living trees are craters of ash, the remains of comrades chopped down and burned.
Attached to the trunks on one row of 10 palms, barely visible unless you’re looking, are devices the size and color of apples. Nearby, a small white box uploads their signal to the cloud. The generic-seeming name on the box leads to a company in generic office space outside Tel Aviv.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/10/opin ... 778d3e6de3
Israeli sensors on the Persian Gulf, across the water from Iran, are part of an epic battle in the Middle East. Just not the one we’re used to.
Dates in the Middle East are like corn for the Maya — not just a crop but an icon, the “bread of the desert,” a symbol of life itself. The date palm appears on mosaic floors laid by Roman artisans and on coins stamped by the early caliphs. The fruit recurs in the Quran and the Hebrew Bible: Many scholars believe the honey in “land of milk and honey” refers to honey from dates, not bees.
With their long shelf life, dates were beloved by Arabian nomads and caravan traders, and are still eaten to break the Ramadan fast. In Israel the name Tamar, which means “date” and appears in the Book of Genesis, remains the most popular Hebrew name for girls. (I have a daughter named Tamar who doesn’t like dates.) At desert oases and in small holdings along the Nile, the same trees might support the same family over generations.
There’s the Middle East of the news, a region of nuclear proliferation, civil wars and futile diplomacy. Then there’s the Middle East of dates — a map defined not by national boundaries but by the stately trees in their hundreds of millions, stretching east from the Atlantic coast of Morocco through North Africa, Egypt and Israel, to Iraq and the Persian Gulf toward Iran and beyond.
The Middle East of the news saw a striking political shift at the end of last year, produced by the efforts of American envoys and by new perceptions of common enemies. In the date world, too, there’s a new alignment afoot. This change has nothing to do with American diplomats or Iranian Revolutionary Guards. But it, too, involves a common enemy and is undermining the familiar boundaries, creating new connections among the people who live here and restoring others that once existed and were lost. These stories intersect in the emirate of Dubai.
Past a camel racetrack 30 miles inland from the Persian Gulf, skyscrapers looming in the distance like Oz, past a desert turnoff adorned with a portrait of this emirate’s ruler, Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, is one orchard of 1,500 palms. The owner is Abdalla Ahli, 59, a native of Dubai who attended the University of Delaware. He greeted me in a traditional robe (the thawb) and a matching baseball hat (Lacoste). Mr. Ahli keeps a few emus in a pen and owns larger farms deeper in the interior. The dates he grows here are a compact, chewy kind called khalas, some of the best I’ve eaten. The total number of trees in the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is part, is sometimes estimated at 40 million, though even the government doesn’t know exactly.
It doesn’t take long in the shade of Mr. Ahli’s green fronds to see that something’s wrong. Many of the trees have strange holes in their trunks, and some are so thoroughly riddled they appear to have been sprayed with bullets. Amid the living trees are craters of ash, the remains of comrades chopped down and burned.
Attached to the trunks on one row of 10 palms, barely visible unless you’re looking, are devices the size and color of apples. Nearby, a small white box uploads their signal to the cloud. The generic-seeming name on the box leads to a company in generic office space outside Tel Aviv.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/10/opin ... 778d3e6de3
What We Learned From Mubarak
Regimes that muzzle their people’s voices eventually push people into venting their frustrations from muzzles of a different sort.
Ten years ago, as masses of demonstrators filled Cairo’s Tahrir Square, I made a modest bet with a friend that Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s dictator of nearly 30 years, would hold on to power. My thinking was that Mubarak controlled the army, and the army could see that the choice Egypt faced wasn’t between democracy and dictatorship. It was the choice among Islamism, chaos — and him.
I lost the bet, but I wasn’t entirely wrong.
Mubarak himself, of course, soon fell, raising broad hopes that decent, stable, representative democracy might yet establish itself not just in Egypt but throughout the Arabic-speaking world. But as a devastating report on Sunday from The Times’s Ben Hubbard and David D. Kirkpatrick reminds readers, virtually none of those hopes survive.
In Tunisia, where it all began, the economy and government sputter. In Syria, the dead number in the hundreds of thousands and refugees in the millions — and Bashar al-Assad is still in power. In Libya, Muammar el-Qaddafi’s ouster has led to a decade of militia warfare. Iraq and Syria were both brutalized by the Islamic State until it was largely snuffed out. Yemen has collapsed into a regional proxy war while millions face starvation. Lebanon — a garden without walls, as my late friend Fouad Ajami used to say — is a failed state. Egyptian politics went from dictatorship to democracy to Islamism to dictatorship within the space of 30 months.
“The hope for a new era of freedom and democracy that surged across the region has been largely crushed,” Hubbard and Kirkpatrick write. “The United States proved to be an unreliable ally. And other powers that intervened forcefully to stamp out the revolts and bend the region to their will — Iran, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates — have only grown more powerful.”
So, was Mubarak right? Is Mubarakism right? That is, is the best political option for a country like Egypt some kind of authoritarian system that avoids the outward brutishness of a figure like Saddam Hussein but also keeps its billy clubs close at hand?
That’s a question that stretches beyond the Arab world. Want to know how Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping or Ali Khamenei justify themselves in jailing dissidents and cracking heads in Moscow, Hong Kong or Tehran? They point to the wreckage of Syria, symbol of resistance to authoritarian rule. Want to know how they justify their anti-Americanism? They point to a picture of Benghazi, symbol of America’s reckless use of power in pursuit of its feckless humanitarianism.
In short, the words “Arab Spring” — scare quotes included — have become a powerful empirical argument for repression. There’s a psychological argument, too. “It is ultimately a cruel misunderstanding of youth to believe it will find its heart’s desire in freedom,” says Leo Naphta, a major character in Thomas Mann’s “The Magic Mountain.” “Its deepest desire is to obey.”
It’s foolish to dismiss these arguments: They are a major reason both the Bush and Obama administrations mostly found failure in the Middle East. Cultures and societies that have known varieties of despotism for their entire history don’t become liberal democracies from one season to the next. Nobody is born with the habits of a free mind. They’re difficult to learn and tempting to dismiss.
But it would be equally foolish to settle for Mubarakism. The Arab world exploded a decade ago and has been collapsing ever since not because of the absence of repression but, to a large degree, on account of its accumulated weight. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi may bet he can rule Egypt by being a more charismatic (and more repressive) version of Mubarak. That’s not a bet the United States should help him make.
That doesn’t mean the Biden administration should look for opportunities to distance itself from el-Sisi or other autocratic allies in the region like Saudi Arabia. But Secretary of State Antony Blinken can adopt the advice that John McCain offered a decade ago, just before Mubarak was toppled.
“We need to be more assisting but also more insisting,” McCain said in 2011, as part of “a new compact with our undemocratic partners.” Economic aid to Cairo or security guarantees for Riyadh? Yes: The U.S. has real enemies in the region and doesn’t have the luxury of conducting its foreign policy as a moral vanity project.
But assistance has to be accompanied by gradual but definite steps toward economic and political liberalization, starting with the release of nonviolent political prisoners. Regimes that muzzle their people’s voices eventually push people into venting their frustrations from muzzles of a different sort.
If the first lesson of the Arab Spring is that revolutions fail, the second is that repression ultimately makes revolution more likely and more deadly. The lesson for the Biden administration is to push our partners toward reform before a second spring returns to further extend the chaos.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/15/opin ... 778d3e6de3
Regimes that muzzle their people’s voices eventually push people into venting their frustrations from muzzles of a different sort.
Ten years ago, as masses of demonstrators filled Cairo’s Tahrir Square, I made a modest bet with a friend that Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s dictator of nearly 30 years, would hold on to power. My thinking was that Mubarak controlled the army, and the army could see that the choice Egypt faced wasn’t between democracy and dictatorship. It was the choice among Islamism, chaos — and him.
I lost the bet, but I wasn’t entirely wrong.
Mubarak himself, of course, soon fell, raising broad hopes that decent, stable, representative democracy might yet establish itself not just in Egypt but throughout the Arabic-speaking world. But as a devastating report on Sunday from The Times’s Ben Hubbard and David D. Kirkpatrick reminds readers, virtually none of those hopes survive.
In Tunisia, where it all began, the economy and government sputter. In Syria, the dead number in the hundreds of thousands and refugees in the millions — and Bashar al-Assad is still in power. In Libya, Muammar el-Qaddafi’s ouster has led to a decade of militia warfare. Iraq and Syria were both brutalized by the Islamic State until it was largely snuffed out. Yemen has collapsed into a regional proxy war while millions face starvation. Lebanon — a garden without walls, as my late friend Fouad Ajami used to say — is a failed state. Egyptian politics went from dictatorship to democracy to Islamism to dictatorship within the space of 30 months.
“The hope for a new era of freedom and democracy that surged across the region has been largely crushed,” Hubbard and Kirkpatrick write. “The United States proved to be an unreliable ally. And other powers that intervened forcefully to stamp out the revolts and bend the region to their will — Iran, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates — have only grown more powerful.”
So, was Mubarak right? Is Mubarakism right? That is, is the best political option for a country like Egypt some kind of authoritarian system that avoids the outward brutishness of a figure like Saddam Hussein but also keeps its billy clubs close at hand?
That’s a question that stretches beyond the Arab world. Want to know how Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping or Ali Khamenei justify themselves in jailing dissidents and cracking heads in Moscow, Hong Kong or Tehran? They point to the wreckage of Syria, symbol of resistance to authoritarian rule. Want to know how they justify their anti-Americanism? They point to a picture of Benghazi, symbol of America’s reckless use of power in pursuit of its feckless humanitarianism.
In short, the words “Arab Spring” — scare quotes included — have become a powerful empirical argument for repression. There’s a psychological argument, too. “It is ultimately a cruel misunderstanding of youth to believe it will find its heart’s desire in freedom,” says Leo Naphta, a major character in Thomas Mann’s “The Magic Mountain.” “Its deepest desire is to obey.”
It’s foolish to dismiss these arguments: They are a major reason both the Bush and Obama administrations mostly found failure in the Middle East. Cultures and societies that have known varieties of despotism for their entire history don’t become liberal democracies from one season to the next. Nobody is born with the habits of a free mind. They’re difficult to learn and tempting to dismiss.
But it would be equally foolish to settle for Mubarakism. The Arab world exploded a decade ago and has been collapsing ever since not because of the absence of repression but, to a large degree, on account of its accumulated weight. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi may bet he can rule Egypt by being a more charismatic (and more repressive) version of Mubarak. That’s not a bet the United States should help him make.
That doesn’t mean the Biden administration should look for opportunities to distance itself from el-Sisi or other autocratic allies in the region like Saudi Arabia. But Secretary of State Antony Blinken can adopt the advice that John McCain offered a decade ago, just before Mubarak was toppled.
“We need to be more assisting but also more insisting,” McCain said in 2011, as part of “a new compact with our undemocratic partners.” Economic aid to Cairo or security guarantees for Riyadh? Yes: The U.S. has real enemies in the region and doesn’t have the luxury of conducting its foreign policy as a moral vanity project.
But assistance has to be accompanied by gradual but definite steps toward economic and political liberalization, starting with the release of nonviolent political prisoners. Regimes that muzzle their people’s voices eventually push people into venting their frustrations from muzzles of a different sort.
If the first lesson of the Arab Spring is that revolutions fail, the second is that repression ultimately makes revolution more likely and more deadly. The lesson for the Biden administration is to push our partners toward reform before a second spring returns to further extend the chaos.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/15/opin ... 778d3e6de3
Jumping Jehoshaphat! Have You Seen How Many Israelis Just Visited the U.A.E.?
We may be witnessing a major realignment of the Middle East.
I was Googling around the other day for a factoid: how many Israelis had visited the United Arab Emirates since the signing of their normalization agreement, known as the Abraham Accords. Answer: more than 130,000.
Jumping Jehoshaphat, Batman! In the middle of a global pandemic, at least 130,000 Israeli tourists and investors have flown to Dubai and Abu Dhabi since commercial air travel was established in mid-October!
I believed from the start that the openings between Israel and the U.A.E., Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan — forged by Jared Kushner and Donald Trump — could be game-changing. We are still in the early phase, though, and having lived through the shotgun marriage and divorce of Israelis and Lebanese Christians in the 1980s, I will wait a bit before sending wedding gifts.
That caveat aside, something big seems to be stirring. Unlike the peace breakthroughs between Israel and Egypt, Israel and Lebanon’s Christians and Israel and Jordan, which were driven from the top and largely confined there, the openings between Israel and the Gulf States — while initiated from the top to build an alliance against Iran — are now being driven even more from the bottom, by tourists, students and businesses.
A new Hebrew language school that holds classes in Dubai and Abu Dhabi has been swamped with Emiratis wanting to study in Israel or do business there. Israel’s Mekorot National Water Company just finalized a deal to provide Bahrain with desalination technology for brackish water. The Times of Israel recently ran an article about Elli Kriel in Dubai, who “has become the go-to kosher chef in the U.A.E. … Last year, Kriel launched Kosherati, which sells kosher-certified Emirati cuisine, as well as fusion Jewish-Emirati dishes.” And, by the way, those 130,000 Israeli visitors helped to save the U.A.E.’s tourist industry from being crushed by the pandemic during the crucial holiday season.
If the Abraham Accords do thrive and broaden to include normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, we are talking about one of the most significant realignments in modern Middle East history, which for many decades was largely shaped by Great Power interventions and Arab-Israeli dynamics. Not anymore.
Today, “there are three powerful non-Arab actors in the region — Iran, Turkey and Israel — and they have each constructed their own regional axis,” argues Itamar Rabinovich, the Israeli Middle East historian, who just co-wrote “Syrian Requiem,” a smart history of the Syrian civil war. Those three axes, Rabinovich explains, are Turkey with Qatar and their proxy Hamas; Iran with Syria and Iran’s proxies running Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen; and Israel with the U.A.E., Bahrain and tacitly Saudi Arabia and Oman.
It’s the interactions of these three axes, says Rabinovich, that are really driving Middle East politics today. And because the U.A.E.-Israel axis brings together the most successful Arab state with the most successful non-Arab state, it’s radiating a lot of energy.
With Israel and the U.A.E., “what you are seeing are two ecosystems fusing together,” says Gidi Grinstein, head of Reut, the Israeli strategy institute. Israel is a society that for many years faced hostility from its neighbors and had no oil. “So, over the years, Israel learned to go from isolation and scarcity to abundance and global influence by developing its own explosive innovation economy in areas such as water, solar, cyber, military, medical, finance and agriculture.”
The U.A.E., by contrast, is transitioning from decades of oil abundance to an era of oil scarcity by building its own ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship in the same fields as Israel.
The U.A.E.’s population consists of one million citizens and nine million foreigners, most of them low-wage, non-unionized laborers from India and other parts of South Asia and the rest professionals largely from America, Europe, India and the Arab world. The U.A.E.’s growth strategy for the 21st century — of which the opening to Israel is a key part — is to become THE Arab model for modernity, a diversified economy, globalization and intra-religious tolerance.
To that end, in November the country announced a major liberalization of its Islamic personal laws — allowing unmarried couples to cohabitate, which, among other things, makes the U.A.E. more accepting of gay and lesbian people; criminalizing so-called honor killings of women who “shame” their male relatives — as well as made divorce laws much more equitable for women and loosened restrictions on alcohol.
The U.A.E. is still an absolute monarchy, and a multiparty democracy is not on the menu. But greater gender equality, a more open education system and religious pluralism are. It still has work to do in all those areas, though — witness the embarrassing saga around the leader of Dubai, whose daughter is reportedly being held hostage in her father’s palace. But the U.A.E.’s new social laws constitute a big leap forward in its quest to attract the talent needed for a non-oil economy.
All the neighbors are watching, and they are particularly watching how Iran and Saudi Arabia react.
If you are a Lebanese Shiite living in the poor southern suburbs of Beirut having to scramble every day to barter eggs for meat — as the economy teeters on collapse — you’re asking, Why are we stuck with Iran and its axis of failing proxies like Hezbollah, which just keep letting the past bury our future?
That is a dangerous question for Iran and Hezbollah. And more Lebanese are asking every day. Which may explain why the outspoken Lebanese anti-Hezbollah journalist and publisher Lokman Slim was shot in the head in southern Lebanon a few weeks ago. All fingers point at Hezbollah as the culprit.
As for Saudi Arabia, it is already letting Israel’s national airline, El Al, fly across Saudi airspace to the U.A.E. But will it follow suit and formally normalize with Israel? That would be huge for both Israeli-Arab and Jewish-Muslim relations.
That call will largely be made by the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. M.B.S. is the most politically repressive, militarily aggressive and, yet, socially and religiously progressive leader that Saudi Arabia has ever had. His C.I.A.-reported decision to have Saudi democracy advocate Jamal Khashoggi, who was a longtime U.S. resident, killed and dismembered was utterly demented — an incomprehensible response to a peaceful critic who posed no threat to the kingdom.
The Biden team is still sorting out how it will relate to M.B.S., but it is right to insist that America will continue to deal with Saudi Arabia in general as an ally. Getting the Saudis to join the Abraham Accords is the best way to ensure their success. Because, if done right, their participation could create new energy for an Israeli-Palestinian two-state solution, which, in turn, could make it easier for
Jordan and Egypt to fully normalize relations with Israel as well.
Then you really do have a new Middle East.
Biden needs to move fast, though. Among the Israeli groups aggressively reaching out to the Gulf Arabs to come visit are right-wing Jewish settlers. They want to prove that Israel can expand settlements, control the Palestinians and have great relations with Arab states — all at once. It is called “Abraham Accords washing,” using the new ties with Arabs to mask Israel’s West Bank occupation.
The U.A.E., Bahrain, Morocco and Saudi Arabia need to understand that they have more leverage now to influence Israeli-Palestinian relations than they realize. Israel does not want to lose them. Imagine if Saudi Arabia agreed to join the Abraham Accords, but only on the condition that it could open the Saudi Embassy to Israel in Israeli West Jerusalem while, at the same time, opening an embassy to the Palestinians in an Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem.
Just that one move would help preserve the possibility of a two-state deal, would revitalize the 2002 Saudi peace initiative and would further isolate Iran’s axis of failure. And Israel would find it very hard to reject.
I respect the worry some have that Saudi Arabia’s making peace with Israel could be a vehicle for rehabilitating M.B.S. They might be right. But I don’t believe that is a reason to oppose it. In the Middle East, big change often happens when the big players do the right things for the wrong reasons.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/02/opin ... 778d3e6de3
We may be witnessing a major realignment of the Middle East.
I was Googling around the other day for a factoid: how many Israelis had visited the United Arab Emirates since the signing of their normalization agreement, known as the Abraham Accords. Answer: more than 130,000.
Jumping Jehoshaphat, Batman! In the middle of a global pandemic, at least 130,000 Israeli tourists and investors have flown to Dubai and Abu Dhabi since commercial air travel was established in mid-October!
I believed from the start that the openings between Israel and the U.A.E., Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan — forged by Jared Kushner and Donald Trump — could be game-changing. We are still in the early phase, though, and having lived through the shotgun marriage and divorce of Israelis and Lebanese Christians in the 1980s, I will wait a bit before sending wedding gifts.
That caveat aside, something big seems to be stirring. Unlike the peace breakthroughs between Israel and Egypt, Israel and Lebanon’s Christians and Israel and Jordan, which were driven from the top and largely confined there, the openings between Israel and the Gulf States — while initiated from the top to build an alliance against Iran — are now being driven even more from the bottom, by tourists, students and businesses.
A new Hebrew language school that holds classes in Dubai and Abu Dhabi has been swamped with Emiratis wanting to study in Israel or do business there. Israel’s Mekorot National Water Company just finalized a deal to provide Bahrain with desalination technology for brackish water. The Times of Israel recently ran an article about Elli Kriel in Dubai, who “has become the go-to kosher chef in the U.A.E. … Last year, Kriel launched Kosherati, which sells kosher-certified Emirati cuisine, as well as fusion Jewish-Emirati dishes.” And, by the way, those 130,000 Israeli visitors helped to save the U.A.E.’s tourist industry from being crushed by the pandemic during the crucial holiday season.
If the Abraham Accords do thrive and broaden to include normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, we are talking about one of the most significant realignments in modern Middle East history, which for many decades was largely shaped by Great Power interventions and Arab-Israeli dynamics. Not anymore.
Today, “there are three powerful non-Arab actors in the region — Iran, Turkey and Israel — and they have each constructed their own regional axis,” argues Itamar Rabinovich, the Israeli Middle East historian, who just co-wrote “Syrian Requiem,” a smart history of the Syrian civil war. Those three axes, Rabinovich explains, are Turkey with Qatar and their proxy Hamas; Iran with Syria and Iran’s proxies running Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen; and Israel with the U.A.E., Bahrain and tacitly Saudi Arabia and Oman.
It’s the interactions of these three axes, says Rabinovich, that are really driving Middle East politics today. And because the U.A.E.-Israel axis brings together the most successful Arab state with the most successful non-Arab state, it’s radiating a lot of energy.
With Israel and the U.A.E., “what you are seeing are two ecosystems fusing together,” says Gidi Grinstein, head of Reut, the Israeli strategy institute. Israel is a society that for many years faced hostility from its neighbors and had no oil. “So, over the years, Israel learned to go from isolation and scarcity to abundance and global influence by developing its own explosive innovation economy in areas such as water, solar, cyber, military, medical, finance and agriculture.”
The U.A.E., by contrast, is transitioning from decades of oil abundance to an era of oil scarcity by building its own ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship in the same fields as Israel.
The U.A.E.’s population consists of one million citizens and nine million foreigners, most of them low-wage, non-unionized laborers from India and other parts of South Asia and the rest professionals largely from America, Europe, India and the Arab world. The U.A.E.’s growth strategy for the 21st century — of which the opening to Israel is a key part — is to become THE Arab model for modernity, a diversified economy, globalization and intra-religious tolerance.
To that end, in November the country announced a major liberalization of its Islamic personal laws — allowing unmarried couples to cohabitate, which, among other things, makes the U.A.E. more accepting of gay and lesbian people; criminalizing so-called honor killings of women who “shame” their male relatives — as well as made divorce laws much more equitable for women and loosened restrictions on alcohol.
The U.A.E. is still an absolute monarchy, and a multiparty democracy is not on the menu. But greater gender equality, a more open education system and religious pluralism are. It still has work to do in all those areas, though — witness the embarrassing saga around the leader of Dubai, whose daughter is reportedly being held hostage in her father’s palace. But the U.A.E.’s new social laws constitute a big leap forward in its quest to attract the talent needed for a non-oil economy.
All the neighbors are watching, and they are particularly watching how Iran and Saudi Arabia react.
If you are a Lebanese Shiite living in the poor southern suburbs of Beirut having to scramble every day to barter eggs for meat — as the economy teeters on collapse — you’re asking, Why are we stuck with Iran and its axis of failing proxies like Hezbollah, which just keep letting the past bury our future?
That is a dangerous question for Iran and Hezbollah. And more Lebanese are asking every day. Which may explain why the outspoken Lebanese anti-Hezbollah journalist and publisher Lokman Slim was shot in the head in southern Lebanon a few weeks ago. All fingers point at Hezbollah as the culprit.
As for Saudi Arabia, it is already letting Israel’s national airline, El Al, fly across Saudi airspace to the U.A.E. But will it follow suit and formally normalize with Israel? That would be huge for both Israeli-Arab and Jewish-Muslim relations.
That call will largely be made by the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. M.B.S. is the most politically repressive, militarily aggressive and, yet, socially and religiously progressive leader that Saudi Arabia has ever had. His C.I.A.-reported decision to have Saudi democracy advocate Jamal Khashoggi, who was a longtime U.S. resident, killed and dismembered was utterly demented — an incomprehensible response to a peaceful critic who posed no threat to the kingdom.
The Biden team is still sorting out how it will relate to M.B.S., but it is right to insist that America will continue to deal with Saudi Arabia in general as an ally. Getting the Saudis to join the Abraham Accords is the best way to ensure their success. Because, if done right, their participation could create new energy for an Israeli-Palestinian two-state solution, which, in turn, could make it easier for
Jordan and Egypt to fully normalize relations with Israel as well.
Then you really do have a new Middle East.
Biden needs to move fast, though. Among the Israeli groups aggressively reaching out to the Gulf Arabs to come visit are right-wing Jewish settlers. They want to prove that Israel can expand settlements, control the Palestinians and have great relations with Arab states — all at once. It is called “Abraham Accords washing,” using the new ties with Arabs to mask Israel’s West Bank occupation.
The U.A.E., Bahrain, Morocco and Saudi Arabia need to understand that they have more leverage now to influence Israeli-Palestinian relations than they realize. Israel does not want to lose them. Imagine if Saudi Arabia agreed to join the Abraham Accords, but only on the condition that it could open the Saudi Embassy to Israel in Israeli West Jerusalem while, at the same time, opening an embassy to the Palestinians in an Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem.
Just that one move would help preserve the possibility of a two-state deal, would revitalize the 2002 Saudi peace initiative and would further isolate Iran’s axis of failure. And Israel would find it very hard to reject.
I respect the worry some have that Saudi Arabia’s making peace with Israel could be a vehicle for rehabilitating M.B.S. They might be right. But I don’t believe that is a reason to oppose it. In the Middle East, big change often happens when the big players do the right things for the wrong reasons.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/02/opin ... 778d3e6de3
She Was a Star of New Palestinian Music. Then She Played Beside the Mosque.
Sama’ Abdulhadi helped build the Palestinian electronic music scene. Now she is at the center of a debate about Palestinian cultural identity.
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Until the showdown beside the mosque, Sama’ Abdulhadi believed she was a flag bearer for contemporary Palestinian culture.
A 30-year-old D.J. from Ramallah, Ms. Abdulhadi is a rising star of global electronic music. She helped build the electronic music scene in Ramallah, the administrative hub of the occupied West Bank. And through the streaming of her performances in Ramallah and her appearances at major international festivals, she had turned this small mountainous city — often associated with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — into an occasional destination for hardcore European clubbers and international music journalists.
But then, late last December, came the mosque incident.
For her newest video project, Palestinian officials permitted Ms. Abdulhadi to film a performance at Nabi Musa, a remote cultural complex attached to a mosque in a desert area east of Jerusalem that some believe was built where Moses was buried. Several hours into the filming her set was stormed by religious Palestinians, furious at what they saw as an attack on Islam.
They distributed footage of the event, raising a media storm. Palestinian leaders condemned Ms. Abdulhadi and the police detained her for more than a week. She was released on bail but remains under investigation and cannot travel. And this pride of Palestine has become a villain to many amid a public debate about what it is to be Palestinian.
“I always thought that, you know, ‘I’m doing something for Palestine,’” Ms. Abdulhadi said in a recent interview in Ramallah.
“But apparently,” she added, “Palestine didn’t know.”
The furor exposed some of the rawest nerves in contemporary Palestinian society — increasing religiosity, resentment of the elites in Ramallah and an uncertainty about how best to express Palestinian identity at a time when Palestinian sovereignty feels particularly remote. Palestinians have limited autonomy in nearly 40 percent of the West Bank, but Israel rules the rest, controls access between most Palestinian-run towns and regularly conducts raids inside areas of nominal Palestinian control.
For some, Ms. Abdulhadi represents a kind of cultural resistance that helps assert and humanize Palestinian identity on the world stage.
“I didn’t go out to the world, playing in festivals and saying, ‘I’m a Palestinian D.J., and I want to free Palestine,’” Ms. Abdulhadi said. But over time, she found herself inadvertently becoming an informal cultural ambassador, “because everybody just wanted to know more about Palestine.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/05/worl ... 778d3e6de3
Sama’ Abdulhadi helped build the Palestinian electronic music scene. Now she is at the center of a debate about Palestinian cultural identity.
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Until the showdown beside the mosque, Sama’ Abdulhadi believed she was a flag bearer for contemporary Palestinian culture.
A 30-year-old D.J. from Ramallah, Ms. Abdulhadi is a rising star of global electronic music. She helped build the electronic music scene in Ramallah, the administrative hub of the occupied West Bank. And through the streaming of her performances in Ramallah and her appearances at major international festivals, she had turned this small mountainous city — often associated with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — into an occasional destination for hardcore European clubbers and international music journalists.
But then, late last December, came the mosque incident.
For her newest video project, Palestinian officials permitted Ms. Abdulhadi to film a performance at Nabi Musa, a remote cultural complex attached to a mosque in a desert area east of Jerusalem that some believe was built where Moses was buried. Several hours into the filming her set was stormed by religious Palestinians, furious at what they saw as an attack on Islam.
They distributed footage of the event, raising a media storm. Palestinian leaders condemned Ms. Abdulhadi and the police detained her for more than a week. She was released on bail but remains under investigation and cannot travel. And this pride of Palestine has become a villain to many amid a public debate about what it is to be Palestinian.
“I always thought that, you know, ‘I’m doing something for Palestine,’” Ms. Abdulhadi said in a recent interview in Ramallah.
“But apparently,” she added, “Palestine didn’t know.”
The furor exposed some of the rawest nerves in contemporary Palestinian society — increasing religiosity, resentment of the elites in Ramallah and an uncertainty about how best to express Palestinian identity at a time when Palestinian sovereignty feels particularly remote. Palestinians have limited autonomy in nearly 40 percent of the West Bank, but Israel rules the rest, controls access between most Palestinian-run towns and regularly conducts raids inside areas of nominal Palestinian control.
For some, Ms. Abdulhadi represents a kind of cultural resistance that helps assert and humanize Palestinian identity on the world stage.
“I didn’t go out to the world, playing in festivals and saying, ‘I’m a Palestinian D.J., and I want to free Palestine,’” Ms. Abdulhadi said. But over time, she found herself inadvertently becoming an informal cultural ambassador, “because everybody just wanted to know more about Palestine.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/05/worl ... 778d3e6de3
After 4th Vote in 2 Years, Israelis Wonder: When Will the Political Morass End?
With more than 90 percent of ballots counted, the results of the latest election point to another possible stalemate. That has prompted soul-searching about the state of the country’s democracy.
JERUSALEM — When Israelis woke on Wednesday, the day after their fourth election in two years, it felt nothing like a new dawn.
With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing alliance had 52 seats, while his opponents had 56 — both sides several seats short of the 61 needed to form a coalition government with a majority in Parliament. If those counts stand, they could prolong by months the political deadlock that has paralyzed the country for two years.
That prospect was already forcing Israelis to confront questions about the viability of their electoral system, the functionality of their government and whether the divisions between the country’s various polities — secular and devout, right-wing and leftist, Jewish and Arab — have made the country unmanageable.
“It’s not getting any better. It’s even getting worse — and everyone is so tired,” said Rachel Azaria, a centrist former lawmaker who chairs an alliance of environment-focused civil society groups. “The entire country is going crazy.”
Official final results are not expected before Friday. But the partial tallies suggested that both Mr. Netanyahu’s alliance and its opponents would need the support of a small, Islamist Arab party, Raam, to form a majority coalition.
Either of those outcomes would defy conventional logic. The first option would force Islamists into a Netanyahu-led bloc that includes politicians who want to expel Arab citizens of Israel whom they deem “disloyal.” The second would unite Raam with a lawmaker who has baited Arabs and told them to leave the country.
Beyond the election itself, the gridlock extends to the administrative stagnation that has left Israel without a national budget for two consecutive years in the middle of a pandemic, and with several key Civil Service posts unstaffed.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/24/worl ... iversified
With more than 90 percent of ballots counted, the results of the latest election point to another possible stalemate. That has prompted soul-searching about the state of the country’s democracy.
JERUSALEM — When Israelis woke on Wednesday, the day after their fourth election in two years, it felt nothing like a new dawn.
With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing alliance had 52 seats, while his opponents had 56 — both sides several seats short of the 61 needed to form a coalition government with a majority in Parliament. If those counts stand, they could prolong by months the political deadlock that has paralyzed the country for two years.
That prospect was already forcing Israelis to confront questions about the viability of their electoral system, the functionality of their government and whether the divisions between the country’s various polities — secular and devout, right-wing and leftist, Jewish and Arab — have made the country unmanageable.
“It’s not getting any better. It’s even getting worse — and everyone is so tired,” said Rachel Azaria, a centrist former lawmaker who chairs an alliance of environment-focused civil society groups. “The entire country is going crazy.”
Official final results are not expected before Friday. But the partial tallies suggested that both Mr. Netanyahu’s alliance and its opponents would need the support of a small, Islamist Arab party, Raam, to form a majority coalition.
Either of those outcomes would defy conventional logic. The first option would force Islamists into a Netanyahu-led bloc that includes politicians who want to expel Arab citizens of Israel whom they deem “disloyal.” The second would unite Raam with a lawmaker who has baited Arabs and told them to leave the country.
Beyond the election itself, the gridlock extends to the administrative stagnation that has left Israel without a national budget for two consecutive years in the middle of a pandemic, and with several key Civil Service posts unstaffed.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/24/worl ... iversified
Israel’s Shadow War With Iran Moves Out to Sea
Israel and Iran have fought a clandestine war across the Middle East for years, mainly by land and air. Now ships are under attack in the Mediterranean and Red Seas.
JERUSALEM — The sun was rising on the Mediterranean one recent morning when the crew of an Iranian cargo ship heard an explosion. The ship, the Shahr e Kord, was about 50 miles off the coast of Israel, and from the bridge the sailors saw a plume of smoke rising from one of the hundreds of containers stacked on deck.
The state-run Iranian shipping company said the vessel had been heading to Spain and called the explosion a “terrorist act.”
But the attack on the Shahr e Kord this month was just one of the latest salvos in a long-running covert conflict between Israel and Iran. An Israeli official said the attack was retaliation for an Iranian assault on an Israeli cargo ship last month.
Since 2019, Israel has been attacking ships carrying Iranian oil and weapons through the eastern Mediterranean and Red Seas, opening a new maritime front in a regional shadow war that had previously played out by land and in the air.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/26/worl ... 778d3e6de3
******
‘A Very Big Problem.’ Giant Ship in the Suez Remains Stuck.
A small Egyptian village has a front-row seat to the unfolding effort to dislodge the container ship that ran aground in the canal, holding up $10 billion in global trade every day.
MANSHIYET RUGOLA, Egypt — The gargantuan container ship that has blocked world trade by getting stuck aslant the Suez Canal has towered over Umm Gaafar’s dusty brick house for five days now, humming its deep mechanical hum.
She looked up from where she sat in the bumpy dirt lane and considered what the vessel, the Ever Given, might be carrying in all those containers. Flat-screen TVs? Full-sized refrigerators, washing machines or ceiling fans? Neither she nor her neighbors in the village of Manshiyet Rugola, population 5,000-ish, had any of those at home.
“Why don’t they pull out one of those containers?” joked Umm Gaafar, 65. “There could be something good in there. Maybe it could feed the town.”
The Japanese-owned Ever Given and the more than 300 cargo ships now waiting to traverse the Suez Canal, one of the world’s most critical shipping arteries, could supply Manshiyet Rugola many, many times over.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/27/worl ... 778d3e6de3
Israel and Iran have fought a clandestine war across the Middle East for years, mainly by land and air. Now ships are under attack in the Mediterranean and Red Seas.
JERUSALEM — The sun was rising on the Mediterranean one recent morning when the crew of an Iranian cargo ship heard an explosion. The ship, the Shahr e Kord, was about 50 miles off the coast of Israel, and from the bridge the sailors saw a plume of smoke rising from one of the hundreds of containers stacked on deck.
The state-run Iranian shipping company said the vessel had been heading to Spain and called the explosion a “terrorist act.”
But the attack on the Shahr e Kord this month was just one of the latest salvos in a long-running covert conflict between Israel and Iran. An Israeli official said the attack was retaliation for an Iranian assault on an Israeli cargo ship last month.
Since 2019, Israel has been attacking ships carrying Iranian oil and weapons through the eastern Mediterranean and Red Seas, opening a new maritime front in a regional shadow war that had previously played out by land and in the air.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/26/worl ... 778d3e6de3
******
‘A Very Big Problem.’ Giant Ship in the Suez Remains Stuck.
A small Egyptian village has a front-row seat to the unfolding effort to dislodge the container ship that ran aground in the canal, holding up $10 billion in global trade every day.
MANSHIYET RUGOLA, Egypt — The gargantuan container ship that has blocked world trade by getting stuck aslant the Suez Canal has towered over Umm Gaafar’s dusty brick house for five days now, humming its deep mechanical hum.
She looked up from where she sat in the bumpy dirt lane and considered what the vessel, the Ever Given, might be carrying in all those containers. Flat-screen TVs? Full-sized refrigerators, washing machines or ceiling fans? Neither she nor her neighbors in the village of Manshiyet Rugola, population 5,000-ish, had any of those at home.
“Why don’t they pull out one of those containers?” joked Umm Gaafar, 65. “There could be something good in there. Maybe it could feed the town.”
The Japanese-owned Ever Given and the more than 300 cargo ships now waiting to traverse the Suez Canal, one of the world’s most critical shipping arteries, could supply Manshiyet Rugola many, many times over.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/27/worl ... 778d3e6de3
Home World News
Egypt parades 22 mummies through Cairo, showing off ancient heritage & putting ‘Pharaoh’s curse’ myth to rest (PHOTOS, VIDEO)
4 Apr, 2021 04:55 / Updated 17 hours ago
Egypt parades 22 mummies through Cairo, showing off ancient heritage & putting ‘Pharaoh’s curse’ myth to rest (PHOTOS, VIDEO)
Royal mummies are transported in a convoy from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Fustat, in Cairo, Egypt, April 3, 2021 © Reuters / Amr Abdallah Dalsh
Egypt has relocated its ancient kings and queens, including Ramses II and Hatshepsut, one of the few known female pharaohs, to a new resting place in a grand ceremony designed to showcase the country’s heritage and boost tourism.
The convoy of golden trucks that moved through the streets of Cairo on Saturday was designed to resemble the ancient boats that once carried deceased pharaohs to their tombs.
The mummy of King Ramesses V © Reuters / Amr Abdallah Dalsh
The mummies were transported inside climate-controlled capsules filled with nitrogen from the Egyptian Museum to the newly-inaugurated National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in a spectacular ceremony.
As the mummies made the one-hour journey to their new resting place in Fustat, the site of Egypt’s first Islamic capital, the historic event was widely broadcast on TV and online.
Egyptian artists perform near pyramids at a ceremony of a transfer of Royal mummies. The show featured various artistic performances and famous landmarks in an apparent bid to boost tourism, which has stalled during the Covid-19 pandemic.
As the procession circled Cairo’s Tahrir Square, an obelisk surrounded by four sphinxes was officially unveiled in the square.
A light display in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, April 3, 2021 © Reuters / Mohamed Abd El Ghany
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, as well as the heads of UNESCO and the World Tourism Organization, welcomed the mummies at their new home, where Egyptologists say they will now be displayed in a more “civilized” and “educated” manner.
General view of a parade at a ceremony of a transfer of Royal mummies from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Fustat, in Cairo, Egypt April 3, 2021, © Reuters TV
In recent weeks, Egypt has experienced a series of unfortunate incidents – including the Suez Canal blockage, a fatal train crash, a garment factory fire, and a deadly apartment building collapse – reanimating the ‘pharaoh’s curse’ myth. However, with the 18 ancient kings and four queens now finally settled in their new home, perhaps that myth can also be put to rest at last.
https://www.rt.com/news/520071-egypt-ph ... es-parade/
Note: On 4th July 969, Ghazi Johar entered FUSTAT, and near Fustat he founded the famous city of CAIRO on orders of Imam Muiz.
Egypt parades 22 mummies through Cairo, showing off ancient heritage & putting ‘Pharaoh’s curse’ myth to rest (PHOTOS, VIDEO)
4 Apr, 2021 04:55 / Updated 17 hours ago
Egypt parades 22 mummies through Cairo, showing off ancient heritage & putting ‘Pharaoh’s curse’ myth to rest (PHOTOS, VIDEO)
Royal mummies are transported in a convoy from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Fustat, in Cairo, Egypt, April 3, 2021 © Reuters / Amr Abdallah Dalsh
Egypt has relocated its ancient kings and queens, including Ramses II and Hatshepsut, one of the few known female pharaohs, to a new resting place in a grand ceremony designed to showcase the country’s heritage and boost tourism.
The convoy of golden trucks that moved through the streets of Cairo on Saturday was designed to resemble the ancient boats that once carried deceased pharaohs to their tombs.
The mummy of King Ramesses V © Reuters / Amr Abdallah Dalsh
The mummies were transported inside climate-controlled capsules filled with nitrogen from the Egyptian Museum to the newly-inaugurated National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in a spectacular ceremony.
As the mummies made the one-hour journey to their new resting place in Fustat, the site of Egypt’s first Islamic capital, the historic event was widely broadcast on TV and online.
Egyptian artists perform near pyramids at a ceremony of a transfer of Royal mummies. The show featured various artistic performances and famous landmarks in an apparent bid to boost tourism, which has stalled during the Covid-19 pandemic.
As the procession circled Cairo’s Tahrir Square, an obelisk surrounded by four sphinxes was officially unveiled in the square.
A light display in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, April 3, 2021 © Reuters / Mohamed Abd El Ghany
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, as well as the heads of UNESCO and the World Tourism Organization, welcomed the mummies at their new home, where Egyptologists say they will now be displayed in a more “civilized” and “educated” manner.
General view of a parade at a ceremony of a transfer of Royal mummies from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Fustat, in Cairo, Egypt April 3, 2021, © Reuters TV
In recent weeks, Egypt has experienced a series of unfortunate incidents – including the Suez Canal blockage, a fatal train crash, a garment factory fire, and a deadly apartment building collapse – reanimating the ‘pharaoh’s curse’ myth. However, with the 18 ancient kings and four queens now finally settled in their new home, perhaps that myth can also be put to rest at last.
https://www.rt.com/news/520071-egypt-ph ... es-parade/
Note: On 4th July 969, Ghazi Johar entered FUSTAT, and near Fustat he founded the famous city of CAIRO on orders of Imam Muiz.