The resolution was such this time that Britain itself could vote for it, after it had until now tail-ended the US position, not daring to contradict it except by abstaining once while Washington used its veto. As for the US administration’s justification of its abstention on Monday by pointing out that the resolution did not name “Hamas”, it is a completely vain pretext that cannot fool anyone, since the resolution did not name Israel either, even when talking about the necessity of opening the way for international aid to enter! Avoiding the two direct designations constituted indeed one of the compromises upon which the resolution is based.

The truth is that Washington’s abstention was intended to try to alleviate the resentment of the Israeli side so that Washington would not appear as if it were participating in a UN Security Council’s consensus on a resolution that Israel rejects. Just last Saturday, the Likud-Zionist Foreign Minister, Israel Katz, had accused the United Nations of having become, under the leadership of the current Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, “an antisemitic and anti-Israeli body that shelters and emboldens terror”! With this, Israel’s usual policy of labelling any criticism of its policies as anti-Jewish reached a new low in decadence and vulgarity.

As for the administration of US President Joe Biden, it has reached for its part a new low in hypocrisy. It continues to supply Israel with weapons and ammunition, as it began to do immediately from the beginning of the Zionist genocidal war on Gaza, so that it has become fully complicit in the ongoing onslaught, which is in fact the first fully joint war between the United States and the Zionist state. While Benjamin Netanyahu cancelled a visit to Washington that was scheduled for a delegation headed by one of his advisors on strategic affairs, the Minister of “Defence” in his government, Yoav Galant, who is of course also a member of the smaller war cabinet formed at the beginning of the current onslaught, arrived in Washington on Monday. His visit is much more important than the one that Netanyahu cancelled. Upon his arrival in the US capital, Gallant declared that his armed forces would inevitably invade Rafah. He came to consult with the Biden administration on how to package the Rafah invasion so that both sides could claim that they took into account the humanitarian considerations that have become a highly sensitive issue for the US administration.

Needless to say, this sensitivity does not stem from any dedication to those humanitarian considerations themselves. How could they stem from them after Washington has fully participated in the killing of approximately forty thousand people and the wounding of tens of thousands more, including a high percentage of seriously injured; in the destruction of the Gaza Strip to a degree the likes of which history has never witnessed with regard to the extent of damage achieved in very few months; and in the displacement of the vast majority of the population of the Strip to the Rafah area? The food aid boxes that Washington drops from the air are gesticulations that are far from being able to disculpate the US administration as intended, as all the persons in charge of international humanitarian aid have confirmed that it is an expensive and ineffective way to eliminate the deadly famine that is spreading among the Gazans. They point instead to the thousands of trucks lined up on the Egyptian side of the border, which Israel prevents from entering, while it would be enough for Washington to exert actual pressure on the Zionist state by seriously threatening to stop its military support in order to force it to open the doors to aid via land, which is the only way that is truly capable of reducing the humanitarian crisis and preventing the spread of famine and its exacerbation.

Democracy Now! Video: “I Could Not Stay Silent: Annelle Sheline Resigns from State Dept. over U.S. Gaza Policy”

As for the port that they are building on the coast of Gaza, it is also not capable of resolving the crisis. Moreover, people have every right to question the true intention behind it, as it may be used to encourage the Gazans to emigrate if the gates of Sinai remain closed to them. Indeed, the fascist Zionist government intends to complete the second Nakba by uprooting the Palestinians from the land of Palestine one more time, this time from the Gaza Strip. Their first intention was to deport them into Sinai, but the rejection of this perspective by the regime of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (for security considerations, not humanitarian ones, of course) made them consider deporting them to various parts of the world. They made contacts with several countries for this purpose, according to Netanyahu’s own testimony.

Recently, voices have been raised in Israel suggesting a concentration of the Gazans in some corner of the Negev desert on the Egyptian border so that the Zionist state could annex the Gaza Strip as a much more valuable property, especially due to its coastal line. All this worried Washington, which prompted it to invite Benny Gantz, a member of the war cabinet who opposes Netanyahu and the Likud government, to discuss the matter with him. It also received Gallant, who is also an opponent of Netanyahu, but from within Likud. The US administration is concerned about the deportation project, which contradicts its position calling for preserving the Oslo framework and getting the “Palestinian Authority” to supervise the Gaza Strip again, primarily under Israeli tutelage, which might be accompanied by the deployment of regional or international forces.

Translated from the Arabic original published in Al-Quds al-Arabi on 26 March 2024.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment..

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( Middle East Monitor ) – Sacrifice of scapegoats is one of the oldest customs and methods of governance. It is common to see the primary person responsible for any grave mistake or action that provokes popular discontent, trying to deflect responsibility from themselves by blaming their subordinates, regardless of the different ranks. The head of state often sacrifices their prime minister to pay for their actions; prime minister sacrifices one of their ministers; the minister sacrifices one of their ministry officials, and so on.  If we add to the above the usual tendency in patriarchal societies to treat women with hatred and contempt, even greater than what a man is treated in the same situation, we almost pity the dismissed Libyan Foreign Minister, Najla El-Mangoush, and feel sadness over what happened to her, especially since she was the first woman to hold her position. 

The truth must be told in this regard: the appointment of women to government positions in our region, which has increased slightly in recent years, is not at all related to civilisational progress or a shift in the consciousness of Arab rulers to embrace the principle of gender equality, nor has it, unfortunately, resulted from an increase in the strength of the regional women’s movement. Rather, it is merely a symbolic gesture that male rulers seek to suggest the modernity of their ideas and to gain some appreciation in the eyes of Western governments, especially the American government. This is because the women’s movement in the US, like the black movement and other social movements, succeeded in imposing standards of equality on its societies, even if the matter is still fragile and susceptible to relapse, as we see with the rise of the patriarchal and racist far right, spearheaded by Donald Trump.

For example, Tunisian President Kais Saied’s appointment of Najla Boudin as Prime Minister two years ago, shortly after his coup against the Constitution, was nothing more than an attempt by him to soften his reactionary challenge to democratic institutions by suggesting that the matter opened the way for progressive societal measures. Saied threw Najla Boudin in the garbage at the beginning of this month, implicitly blaming her for his economic and social failure. Likewise, Libyan Prime Minister, Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh’s appointment of Najla El-Mangoush as his Foreign Minister was nothing more than a means to curry favour with the Western governments, beginning with the US government.

We do not doubt for a moment that the same logic of currying favour was what prompted Dbeibeh to make his Minister meet her Israeli counterpart in Rome, a meeting that was supposed to be kept a secret from everyone except the American government, which was involved with both parties in the process.

The US State Department strongly condemned the far-right Zionist government’s disclosure of the secret in a cheap attempt to divert attention from the state of disobedience it faces as a result of the cold civil war raging in Israeli society.

We also do not doubt for a moment that Dbeibeh was completely aware in advance of the meeting that was scheduled to take place, and that this meeting would not have taken place had it not been for his decision to hold it. As for the claim that what El Mangoush did was a “lone act”, it is a claim that is demeaning to the Libyan people and a disregard for them. Adding insult to injury, Dbeibeh visited the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority embassy in Tripoli and announced his dismissal of Najla El-Mangoush from there. He believes that a visit by the representatives of an authority cooperating with the Israeli government would be enough to convey him as sincere in his support of the cause of the Palestinian people.

However, the dismissed Minister is fortunate in that Dbeibeh is too weak to act like some of the Arab tyrants, as it seems that he ensured that she left the country safely (on a government plane, according to media reports, and perhaps also guaranteed her a comfortable stay in exile in exchange for her silence) instead of throwing her in prison. He did not inflict a harsher reality on her, as is often done by Arab rulers who want to keep their sins a secret.

This article first appeared in Arabic in Al Quds Al Arabia on 30 November, 2023. 

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( Middle East Monitor ) – Naturally, one of the consequences of the sanctions imposed by Western countries on Russia is to stimulate the latter’s search for ways to bypass the restrictions. Since the actions taken by Western countries to punish Russia for its annexation of Crimea and its first intervention in the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine in 2014, Russia has been eagerly working to overcome the obstacles caused by Western decisions regarding its foreign trade.

It is also natural for Iran, which is also suffering from Western sanctions, especially the tough US sanctions imposed on it by Donald Trump in 2018 when he withdrew from the 2015 nuclear agreement. It is natural that Iran and Russia meet in the same endeavour.

From this perspective, Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine – launched four months ago – delighted Iran’s rulers. This war, in addition to weakening Russia’s capabilities in other arenas, including the Syrian arena where there is a well-known competition for influence between Moscow and Tehran, could upset the economic relations between Russia and Iran in the interest of the latter.

This is what the Iranian-born researcher Ali Fathallah Nejad indicated in his explanation of Russia changing its position on the Vienna negotiations regarding the US re-joining the nuclear agreement with Iran.

After Moscow requested “written guarantees” from Washington that Western sanctions imposed will not affect its economic and military cooperation with Tehran, Russia announced the solution to the problem with remarkable flexibility. Fathallah Nejad noted: “Liberating Iran from the many sanctions imposed on it may help Russia bypass the heavy sanctions it is now facing.” This prompted Moscow to facilitate progress in the Vienna negotiations after blocking them, in order to make the negotiations succeed so that most of the sanctions imposed on Iran are lifted. The researcher went on to say, “It is really a great reversal of what prevailed until now, when Iran was under painful sanctions and looked to Russia for support.”

A year ago, after the Suez Canal was closed for six days as a result of a container ship blocking the waterway, the two countries met to stress the importance of accelerating the completion of the International North–South Transport Corridor (INSTC) as an alternative to the Egyptian canal. This crossing is a project approved by Russia, India and Iran exactly 20 years ago (the agreement was signed in May 2002), and a number of Central Asian and Caucasian countries that were formerly Soviet republics participated in it.

The project aims to establish a transport route from the vast circle of the Indian Ocean, including the Gulf, and not only its Iranian part (the Sultanate of Oman was involved in the project), a road that starts from the Indian port of Mumbai by sea to the port of Bandar Abbas in southern Iran and continues overland by rail to cross Iran, Azerbaijan and Russia from its Caucasian borders to its northern European borders. The project has a second branch that travels from Iran to Russia via the Caspian Sea, and a third that passes through Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan in Central Asia. Of course, the land route to the north of Europe through Kazakhstan is a passage that interests China as well, so that the two giants of Asia, China and India, have an alternative to the normal crossing through the Suez Canal, as well as the rest of South and East Asia.

Last week, Iran signed a memorandum of understanding with Russia to facilitate financial and commercial transactions between the two countries against the backdrop of Western sanctions imposed on them. The memorandum provided for “accelerating the North-South crossing project,” which is being prepared by means of building the necessary infrastructure for it, including ports, railways and roads. It is inevitable that the project will reduce crossing through the Suez Canal, which is one of the main sources of income for the Egyptian state, as a study prepared by the Shipping Corporation of India estimated that the crossing would save one-third of the cost of going through the Suez Canal and more than half of its duration (23 days instead of 45 to 60 currently).

This article first appeared in Arabic in Al-Quds Al-Arabi on 21 June 2022

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( Middle East Monitor ) – The President of the Syrian regime, Bashar Al-Assad, paid a surprise visit to Tehran last Sunday and, adding to its surprising nature, is the fact that he had rarely dared to leave his country since the popular uprising against his regime began in 2011. His first visit outside Syria, since then, was to Moscow in October 2015, a month after the start of Russia’s military intervention in the Syrian war. Then the Syrian President’s visits to Russia were repeated, during which he met his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Sochi (2017 and 2018) and, again, in Moscow last September to mark the end of the sixth year of Russia’s armed forces participating in the destruction of Syria and killing its people.

As for Tehran, Bashar Al-Assad visited it only once before his last visit, and that was in February 2019. It is likely that the visit was a pleasantry, after three visits to Russia without any visit to Iran until then, although Iran was the first to intervene in Syria to save the Assad regime by intensifying the intervention of its forces (Iranian and Afghan forces) and the forces of its Lebanese and Iraqi allies, starting in 2013. However, the recent visit has another meaning that is far from symbolic and closer to strategic concern.

This is because a major development has taken place since the Syrian President visited Moscow last fall. At the time, Russia was at the height of its power. Putin was threatening Ukraine while Russian forces are concentrated on the outskirts of this country, and he was indifferent to the warnings of Western forces, whether they are Washington’s warnings or the friendlier warnings of Berlin and Paris. Observers believed this to be symptomatic of a state of “paranoia”.

Today, however, it became clear that Putin’s calculations were completely wrong. The goals he announced at the beginning of his forces’ invasion of Ukraine, when he was promising regime change in Kyiv, similar to America’s regime change in Baghdad in 2003, which called for an occupation of the Ukrainian capital, suffered a setback. This is what the Russian forces tried to achieve at the beginning of the invasion, but they failed in the face of the intensity of the Ukrainian resistance, which surprised the whole world.

Although Russia announced changing the direction of its invasion, confining it to the occupation of eastern Ukraine, it has been unable to achieve that limited goal after two and a half months of fighting, and is still striving to expand its areas of occupation very slowly and with great difficulty. Perhaps, the most striking expression of the Russian failure was Putin’s dull speech on Monday to mark the annual celebration of the victory over Nazism in 1945 (a Soviet victory that Ukrainians participated heavily in, and celebrated the same victory on Sunday).

Instead of declaring victory on what is known as Victory Day, Putin made do with a very short speech, in which he explained that Russia was forced to invade Ukraine in self-defence and to avoid its neighbour’s armament with nuclear weapons and attacking Russia. This was how George W. Bush and his partners explained occupying Iraq, claiming it was in self-defence and in order to prevent it from developing its arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. They claimed it intended to use these against America. It seems that the world imperialist powers have a limited imagination, so they regurgitate the same excuses.

In fact, the Russian failure is a source of great concern for the Syrian regime, especially since Russia is withdrawing some of its units from Syria to the battlefield in eastern Ukraine and has even started using Syrian fighters in its invasion of that country. With the impact of the economic sanctions on Russia coming into full effect in the coming months, and the exacerbation of the difficulties the Russian forces are facing in the face of the valiant Ukrainian resistance, counting on Russia has become fraught with dangers. This is likely what prompted Bashar Al-Assad to visit Tehran, and has increased Iran’s weight greatly in the balance of protecting the Syrian regime as much as Russia’s weight has decreased.

In this sense, the Russian failure in Ukraine only strengthens Iran’s position, contrary to what might be thought at first glance, and weakens the rest of the reactionary regional alliance which includes the reactionary Arab regimes, especially the normalisation pioneer, Abu Dhabi, alongside Israel and in cooperation with Moscow. From this perspective, the purpose of the Syrian President’s visit to Tehran has become clear, along with his announcement that “In the years of resistance and confrontation with Western and Takfiri aggressions, Iran was the only country that stood by us from the beginning,” as quoted by Tehran Times. This comes off as ingratitude towards Russia, which has been the main supporter of the Syrian military regime for decades. Al-Assad was also describing relations between Iran, his regime, and the Palestinian forces in the “axis of resistance” as “strategic,” noting that “the success of the Palestinian resistance has shown that compromise by some Arab states has backfired.” What sort of compromise is he referring to, as the “normalisation” regimes, which are the closest to his regime, are not only compromising with Israel, but openly colluding with it?

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

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