The new policy, similar to those unveiled in recent months at Harvard University and Haverford College, comes after a tumultuous year at Penn.

The University of Pennsylvania announced Tuesday it will no longer make institutional statements in response to world events, except those that have “direct and significant bearing on University functions.”

The new policy, similar to those unveiled in recent months at Harvard University and Haverford College, comes after a tumultuous year at Penn that included the resignation of its president and a multiweek Gaza solidarity encampment that was taken down by police.

“It is not the role of the institution to render opinions — doing so risks suppressing the creativity and academic freedom of our faculty and students,” Penn administrators wrote in a statement emailed to the campus community. “The university will issue messages on local or world events rarely, and only when those events lie within our operational remit.”

In the last few years, Penn issued statements responding to a range of local and world catastrophes. The university condemned the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel on Oct. 7 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. University leaders called the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade a threat to “basic human rights” in a June 2022 statement and celebrated the jury conviction of Derek Chauvin, the police officer who killed George Floyd, in an April 2021 statement.

The new rules likely would preclude any of those kinds of statements issued by the university in the future.

‘Messages take sides’

Penn’s full policy, published on its website under the heading “Upholding Academic Independence,” lays out the dilemma increasingly roiling major universities: Issuing statements on political and social issues is often meaningful to those it addresses, and the practice increased during the social isolation of the pandemic. But doing so also puts the university in an obvious bind, one that Penn said is made worse by the fact that “these events across the world are almost limitless.”

“Responding to one issue inevitably highlights issues and groups that receive no message — omissions that carry their own meanings, however inadvertent,” Penn administrators wrote. “In many cases, messages take sides, or may appear to, on issues of immense significance or complexity.”

Messages left for representatives of Penn Hillel and Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine were not immediately returned.

Proponents of the idea of so-called institutional neutrality see it as a way to maintain vibrant debate on college campuses, allowing students and faculty freedom to express their own ideas and opinions without the interference of the institution. In a campuswide email accompanying the policy, interim president J. Larry Jameson expressed that hope: “By quieting Penn’s institutional voice, we hope to amplify the expertise and voices within,” he wrote.

But critics see the position — first popularized by the University of Chicago in 1967 to avoid taking a stance on the Vietnam War — as a way for institutions to duck moral responsibility on controversial issues. After Harvard announced its own similar decision in May, Lara Jirmanus, a physician and clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School, called it a “bureaucratic sleight of hand” in an interview with the Boston Globe.

“Every decision at a university is highly political,” Jirmanus said. “From what is taught, to who gets tenure, to how Harvard invests its $50 billion endowment.”

Haverford College recently announced that its president would also no longer issue presidential statements “except about matters that directly impact Haverford or higher education.”

Even while saying that the new policy will rely on a hard line between those world issues that have a direct bearing on the university and those that don’t, Penn administrators acknowledged that such a distinction is far from clear and will probably be hashed out in real time.

“No established lines separate what is or is not of direct concern to University operations,” the new policy says, “so we expect occasional disagreement about where those lines are drawn.”

Source

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“Israel has a right and obligation to defend themselves against the threat of Hamas, while abiding by international humanitarian law and protecting civilian lives, and we remain committed to support Israel in its fight against Hamas,” a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said. “We have done so since Oct. 7, and will continue to. There has not been a change in our policy.”

NBC News reported earlier on Sunday that at the direction of the White House, the Pentagon has been reviewing what weaponry Israel has requested that could be used as leverage. The report cited sources and said no final decisions were made.

The report added that the U.S. is considering slowing or pausing the deliveries in hopes that doing so will make the Israelis take actions such as opening humanitarian corridors to provide more aid to Palestinian civilians.

“There has been no request from the White House for DoD (Department of Defense) to slow down weapons deliveries to Israel,” a White House official said when asked about the NBC News report. “And not aware of any request to review weapons to potentially slow walk deliveries either.”

Among the weaponry the U.S. discussed using as leverage, the NBC News report added, were 155 mm artillery rounds and joint direct attack munitions (JDAMs), which are guidance kits that convert dumb bombs into precision-guided munitions.

The heavy death toll from Israel’s war in Gaza has led to much international alarm. President Joe Biden has previously referred to Israeli bombing as “indiscriminate, opens new tab” but Washington has not called for a ceasefire, saying such a measure would benefit Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which governs Gaza.

Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies. Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza has killed more than 26,000 Palestinians, over 1% of the 2.3 million population there, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Many are feared buried in rubble.

Source: Reuters

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He noted that the events in Gaza revealed the ugly face of the US, suggesting that President Joe Biden can no longer think in a sound and correct manner as he is committing crimes against the people of Gaza and is doing everything in his power to continue the genocide in the enclave.

Al-Houthi stressed, “Force alone cannot achieve anything. The situation today is very different. This is the time of response,” noting that increasing American forces means increasing targets.

Earlier yesterday, the US Central Command announced that three soldiers had been killed and 25 others were injured in a drone attack targeting a base in northeastern Jordan, while the Pentagon called the attack a “dangerous escalation.”

The White House reported that Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin, National Security Advisor Sullivan and the Deputy National Security Advisor briefed Biden on the details of the attack against US service members in northeastern Jordan near the Syrian border.

The Jordanian government denied that the attack took place in the Kingdom, confirming that the Al-Tanf base in Syria was targeted near the Jordanian-Syrian-Iraqi border.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack on the US Al-Tanf base between Syria and Jordan, resulting in the death of three American soldiers and the injury of 25 others.

Source: Middle East Monitor

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At this point in its term of office, the Biden Administration had hoped for a markedly different Middle East.

Under American tutelage, the Trump-era Abraham Accords would have ideally widened the circle of peace among Arab states and Israel, effectively ending the Arab-Israeli conflict and purportedly bringing stability and prosperity to a region sorely in need of it. As regional rivals reconciled their differences, Washington could refocus its attention on the Indo-Pacific region, shifting military and diplomatic assets to counter China.

In this new, more united Middle East, the threat of Iran would be contained by a formidable array of Arab and Israeli military power, and the Palestinian issue (regrettably resistant to any lasting solution, in the jaded view of government officials and pundits alike) would be safely contained. The Palestinians themselves would be mollified by new aid and investments from the wealthy Arab countries, an ample consolation prize in place of their own state. The threat of terrorism and conflict would have been reduced to manageable terms.

The war in Gaza has changed the entire diplomatic and military landscape into the one that Washington had hoped to avoid. Current conditions present daunting new challenges for the Biden administration, including the fearsome threat of wider regional confrontation.

Of course, the reality today is depressingly different. The war in Gaza has changed the entire diplomatic and military landscape into the one that Washington had hoped to avoid. Current conditions present daunting new challenges for the Biden administration, including the fearsome threat of wider regional confrontation.

As they say in the Pentagon, “No plan ever survived first contact with the enemy,” a wise maxim the Biden administration is currently relearning.

Things Fall Apart; the Center Cannot Hold

In the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack in southern Israel on October 7, President Joe Biden took a safe, traditional position, completely within a longstanding Washington consensus —full support of Israel’s “right to defend itself,’ bolstered by pledges of substantial military aid, and backed in this instance by the dispatch of two aircraft carrier strike groups, the USS Gerald R. Ford and the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, to positions off Israel’s Mediterranean coast and in the Red Sea, respectively. But this supposedly safe position rapidly deteriorated into domestic and international political controversy as Biden discovered that fully backing Israel came with substantial political costs he hadn’t, apparently, anticipated.

With Biden’s poll standing eroding, due in no small part to his stance on the conflict, Washington’s diplomatic position has been evolving rapidly. During his tour of the region in early November, Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for “humanitarian pauses”—not to be confused with a “ceasefire”—to allow humanitarian aid shipments to arrive in Gaza. In Tokyo a few days later for a meeting of G-7 foreign ministers, Blinken went significantly further, specifying American terms for an immediate post-war future. He said that there must be “no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza. Not now, not after the war…No use of Gaza as a platform for terrorism or other violent attacks. No reoccupation of Gaza after the conflict ends. No attempt to blockade or besiege Gaza. No reduction in the territory of Gaza…It is imperative that the Palestinian people be central to governance in Gaza and in the West Bank as well, and that, again, we don’t see a reoccupation.”

With Biden’s poll standing eroding, due in no small part to his stance on the conflict, Washington’s diplomatic position has been evolving rapidly.

This is not only aimed at discouraging Israel’s possible imposition of a security zone in Gaza such as that enforced by Tel Aviv in southern Lebanon for 15 years, but also to suggest a new political horizon going forward. In Tokyo, Blinken hinted at that horizon, albeit in vague terms, saying that “it’s vitally important that Palestinian aspirations for governing themselves, for being the ones to decide their own futures, are realized.” This may fall short of a commitment to doing the long, hard work of bringing about a two-state solution, but it may be a start.

US Politics and Rising Pressure on Israel

Meanwhile, domestic political pressures almost unheard of in Washington are continuing to build: popular opinion in the United States, particularly among Democrats, is breaking sharply against Israel. On November 8, 26 Senate Democrats and Independents signed a letter to President Biden asking pointedly whether his administration can ensure that Israeli military operations in Gaza are being “carried out in accordance with international humanitarian law.” While the pro-Israel foundation in Congress remains generally solid, it seems cracks have begun to appear.

The administration is also faced with almost unprecedented dissent in the ranks of the federal bureaucracy. Foreign Service officers have in recent days signed onto three different dissent channel cables, a mechanism established during the Vietnam War to enable the rank-and-file to speak their minds without going messily public. The cables proposed some form of ceasefire to end the Israeli onslaught. Blinken himself felt compelled to meet with at least some of the signatories. And just this week, around 500 career officials and political appointees from about 40 government agencies signed a letter to President Biden also endorsing a ceasefire, citing polling data showing about two-thirds of Americans in favor of it and a de-escalation of violence.

The increasingly desperate situation in Gaza, including 1.5 million internally displaced persons as well as a death toll now exceeding 11,000, has fueled this rising controversy. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, for one, has taken notice, worrying that Israel has limited time to achieve its stated objective of eliminating Hamas in the Gaza Strip before it is forced to bow to pressure, primarily from the United States, to halt its military operations. It is a message that has been re-enforced this month by senior administration officials in contacts with their Israeli counterparts.

Israel’s Reaction

To complicate matters, the Israeli government does not necessarily seem to share the same playbook from which the United States is currently working. On November 7, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced  that Israel will maintain “overall security responsibility” in Gaza for an indefinite period, with no apparent plans for a transition to a diplomatic process to follow. While this falls a bit short of reoccupation, and certainly of the re-establishment of settlements of which some on the far Israeli right dream, it nevertheless opens the door to an untenable political situation that Washington clearly finds undesirable.

Meanwhile, the situation in Gaza continues to deteriorate. November 10 brought news that Israel has besieged several hospitals in Gaza, alleging that they are being used as storage facilities by Hamas, and demanding they be evacuated. A particular focus of Israel’s ire is Gaza’s largest medical complex, Al-Shifa Hospital, under which Israel claims Hamas maintains a system of military bunkers. Early on November 15, Israeli troops entered the complex and alleged that weapons were found inside; but Hamas denied the claim. The increasing number of casualties, ongoing military strikes, and lack of fuel has brought the medical system in Gaza to the point of total collapse.

Israel has agreed to White House demands for short operational pauses in northern Gaza to permit humanitarian aid to enter, but these will not substantially alleviate the suffering of Palestinians throughout the Gaza Strip, and do not necessarily betoken any willingness to consider a broader ceasefire.

Israel has agreed to White House demands for short operational pauses in northern Gaza to permit humanitarian aid to enter, but these will not substantially alleviate the suffering of Palestinians throughout the Gaza Strip, and do not necessarily betoken any willingness to consider a broader ceasefire. Netanyahu has in fact resisted American requests for a longer pause, even to facilitate the release of hostages. Intensive US diplomacy to persuade Israel to commit to more on the humanitarian front continues.

For the future, Netanyahu has steadfastly refused to consider a meaningful peace process after the conflict ends. Indeed, violent West Bank settlers seemingly backed by the Israeli Army have embarked on what can only be described as a campaign of ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank, a development that may prove even more incendiary than the ongoing violence in Gaza.

Regional Context Evolving

The Biden administration is now reduced to trying to stave off a slow-motion wreck of a once hopeful Middle East policy. A formal diplomatic rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia may still take place—despite the Gaza war, both countries have an interest it making it happen—but it is by no means certain and in any case has suffered a real setback. Saudi Arabia has increased its criticism of Israel and reportedly paused any consideration of a deal to normalize relations. Instead, Riyadh hosted an Arab-Islamic summit meeting that included President Ibrahim Raisi of Iran, a diplomatic breakthrough of a very different kind that may not have been possible absent the Gaza crisis. The assembled leaders called for UN Security Council action to adopt a resolution under its binding Chapter 7 authority to halt Israel’s “aggression,” essentially a call for an indefinite ceasefire, cutting against American policy and adding to the international pressure on Washington.

Other Arab states are likewise backing away from Israel. Egypt, which has only ever enjoyed a cold peace with Israel, has made clear that it will not accept a mass transfer of refugees from Gaza to northern Sinai, for fear that they will not be allowed to return, a worry that is by no means unfounded. Cairo has also indicated that it will not participate in defeating Hamas, as it needs the group to help enforce border security. Jordan has declared Israel’s ambassador persona non grata and announced that “all options are on the table” in terms of a response. The United Arab Emirates has adopted a somewhat more measured response, favoring a ceasefire and warning that the United States will lose influence if a solution is not reached soon. Worried about their own domestic politics, several Arab states have individually importuned Washington to do more to pressure Israel to end its military campaign.

The one regional power that seems comfortable with Biden’s policy so far is Iran, apparently seeing it as an opportunity to rally popular and regional leadership opinion to its anti-US and Israel stance.

The one regional power that seems comfortable with Biden’s policy so far is Iran, apparently seeing it as an opportunity to rally popular and regional leadership opinion to its anti-US and Israel stance. The immediate danger of a broader conflict involving Iran and its allies versus the United States and Israel seems not to be imminent, but that does not mean it has gone away. Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has escalated significantly in recent days, and the party’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah warned in separate speeches earlier this month that while the group did not intend to enter the war as a full combatant, it would respond in kind to Israeli attacks on Gaza or Lebanon.

For an administration that staked its regional policy on an expansion of the Abraham Accords, these developments are concerning. They do not necessarily mean an end to the administration’s hopes for further regional integration once the Gaza conflict ends, but they do illustrate the many difficulties and fresh complications ahead—probably quite a few more than US officials anticipated just a few weeks ago. And if a broader conflict should erupt, possibly with the direct involvement of US forces, all bets are off.

Is There an Endgame?

As with any crisis in the Middle East, there is an undeniable but limited opportunity to effect fundamental change in the region’s dynamics. Previous conflagrations have led to major, if incomplete, peacemaking efforts spearheaded by Washington. This moment may be no different. Blinken spoke in Tokyo of “setting the conditions for durable peace and security and to frame our diplomatic efforts now with that in mind.” To be sure, there is, reportedly, discussion of the details of a future peace process at lower levels in the State Department.

But still, at the moment there is little obvious appetite in the White House for either a ceasefire, a peace process, or the political heavy lifting involved in bringing about either. Biden himself has talked in general terms about the need for a two-state solution “when this crisis is over,” but if he’s serious, much more needs to be done, and now.

The Biden administration must act quickly and offer specific plans and timelines to shape post-conflict expectations and establish its priorities with the parties. If it doesn’t, the most radical elements on all sides will set the agenda. Above all, Biden himself has to be willing to recommit his presidency to a major diplomatic push, probably one that will involve both pressure and inducements to raise the stakes for all parties if they fail to cooperate. This seems unlikely at the moment, but intense crises have made potent peacemakers of presidents before.

Source : Arab Center Washington DC

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The announcement of a possible “humanitarian pause” in the Gaza Strip can be considered a triumph for the small Persian Gulf nation of Qatar.

Early on Wednesday morning, the Qatari Foreign Ministry put out a statement announcing a four day “pause” during which all sides — the Israeli military, the militant Hamas group and Hezbollah’s armed wing in Lebanon — would agree to stop fighting. This would allow for the release of 50 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, in exchange for the release of around 150 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. It would also allow desperately needed humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip.

The Hamas-held hostages would be women and children and the Palestinian prisoners released from Israeli jails would also be mainly women and minors aged under 18.  

On October 7, Hamas, which is considered a terrorist organization by the US, EU and others, launched an attack out of Gaza that killed around 1,200 Israelis and foreigners. The militant group also took an estimated 240 hostages back into the Gaza Strip. Since the attack, Israel has been bombing the around-360-square-kilometer enclave and has also prevented most water, food, fuel and medical supplies from entering.

In the past six weeks, 13,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to health officials in the Hamas-controlled territory. 

The hostage negotiations have been going on for weeks. At one stage, the Israeli government reportedly turned down a similar offer in favor of launching its ground offensive into Gaza. However, pressure has grown — from the international community, from Israel’s major ally, the US, and from the families of hostages who have demanded that their government focus on freeing their relatives.

Egypt, which signed a peace agreement with Israel in 1979 and shares a border with Israel and Gaza, has also helped in the negotiations. But it is Qatar that is seen as leading them.

After the Qatari announcement, US President Joe Biden and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken posted messages on X (formerly Twitter) thanking Egypt and Qatar for their “critical partnership” in the negotiations.

Previously even Israel’s national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi had praised Qatar’s role, writing on social media that, “Qatar’s diplomatic efforts are crucial at this time.”

But not everyone is so pleased with the small Gulf state. Some commentators said negotiators should have tried harder to secure the release of more hostages. Others argued that because Qatar has been home to Hamas’ political leadership since 2012, it was somehow complicit in Hamas’ attacks.

Qatar has regularly said it supports the “Palestinian cause.”

Foreign policy tightrope

Experts agree that Qatar is walking a fine line when it comes to its foreign policy, playing the “Switzerland of the Middle East” and keeping doors open to all comers.

“Qatar’s role is particularly sensitive because the emirate has been relying on being an intermediary for well over two decades now,” Guido Steinberg, a senior associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told DW recently.

In the past, Qatar has also acted as an interlocutor between the international community and the Taliban in Afghanistan (who also have political offices in Doha), between the US and Iran, and even Russia and Ukraine. It also hosts the largest US military headquarters in the Middle East, al-Udeid Air Base, which played a significant role in evacuations from Afghanistan in 2021. This led to Qatar being described as “major non-NATO ally.”

The country has also already mediated between Israel and Hamas — such as during the 2014  Israel-Gaza War. Qatar froze relations with Israel in 2009 but allegedly maintains a relationship behind the scenes. In 1996, at a time when other countries in the region were firmly opposed to any ties at all with Israel, Qatar allowed the state to open a trade mission in Doha.

“Qatar has long had a pragmatic relationship where it has used financial incentives to manage and de-escalate various rounds of tensions and war between Israel and Hamas,” Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at the UK-based think tank Chatham House told DW last month. Vakil saw Qatar as “a natural go-between to secure the hostages and find entry points to de-escalate and protect people on the ground as the humanitarian issue worsens.”

Qatar operates in a kind of grey zone, Joel Simon, a US journalist and author of the 2019 book, “We Want to Negotiate: The Secret World of Kidnapping, Hostages, and Ransom,” wrote in the US weekly magazine The New Yorker last week.

“Though the country’s officials say that they are guided by humanitarian principles and a desire to reduce conflict and promote stability, they have clearly used their leverage to gain influence and visibility, a posture which they believe enhances their security in a volatile region,” he explained. Playing both sides makes Qatar a valuable ally and Qatar knows it, he concluded.

Big spender in Gaza

In the recent past, Qatar was spending an estimated $30 million (€27.4 million) a month on Gaza. But the arguments around this money are yet another example of how fraught Qatar’s role is when it comes to Palestinians and Hamas.

Some have suggested Qatari money subsidizes Hamas’ military wing and is used for nefarious purposes. Hamas has ruled the enclave since 2007 and also manages payments for the civil administration of Gaza.

Replying to Reuters queries about the Gaza money last month, a Qatari government official told the news agency that its cash was for needy families and the salaries of civil servants, including doctors and teachers, in the impoverished enclave. The UN says that 80% of Gaza Strip inhabitants were dependent on international aid even before the current crisis, due to the blockade Israel established after Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, two years after Israel withdrew from it.

Qatari money actually goes through Israel, the Qatari official explained to Reuters. It’s transferred electronically to Israel, which then passes it on to the Hamas-run Gaza authorities, and all payments are “fully coordinated with Israel, the UN and the US,” they said.

US officials note that Hamas’ fundraising system is wide, varied and intricate. Some money, including that coming from Qatar, is likely being used illegitimately, they have suggested, along with other funding, such as that from Iran, which plays a major role in supporting Hamas — as do other financial intermediaries around the world. For example, after the October 7 attack, the US sanctioned further entities it associates with funding Hamas, including an intermediary in Qatar as well as others in Sudan, Turkey and Algeria.

Will Qatar’s role change now?

Despite Qatar’s success in this round of negotiations, one outcome of the current conflict appears to be an agreement between Qatar and the US that the Gulf state will have to distance itself from Hamas further after the current conflict quiets down.

In mid-October, over 100 US politicians demanded that Qatar expel Hamas officials from the country. “The country’s links to Hamas…are simply unacceptable,” a letter addressed to the US president stated.

At the same time, the Qatari leadership has stated that it thinks further diplomacy is the answer for peace.

“The Qatari-negotiated deal between Israel and Hamas marks the first important diplomatic gain since the start of the war,” Hugh Lovatt, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, confirmed. And this is “an opportunity to wedge open space to advance a full ceasefire predicated on a wider diplomatic pathway,” he said in a statement to DW. 

But as others have pointed out, if Qatar expels Hamas officials altogether, the militant group’s representatives may well end up in another country far less disposed to help anybody out, should further diplomacy be required.

Before 2012, Hamas’ political leadership was based in Syria.

Source : DW

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“The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades,” asserted US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan on 29 September.

“Now challenges remain, but the amount of time that I have to spend on crisis and conflict in the Middle East today compared to any of my predecessors going back to 9/11 is significantly reduced.”

Sullivan’s comments have aged horribly. Just eight days later, Hamas waged its incursion into southern Israel, triggering a brutal Israeli campaign of bombardment of Gaza. The fighting since 7 October has thus far killed more than 8,000 Palestinians in Gaza and 1,400 Israelis.

The violence has spilled into Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Egypt. At this point, the escalating crisis risks spreading to other parts of the Middle East, possibly entailing direct US and Iranian involvement.

Now a full-scale Israeli ground invasion of Gaza looms and Palestinians are concerned about a ‘Nakba 2.0’. Considering rhetoric coming from high-ranking Israeli officials and Tel Aviv’s plans and actions this month, such concerns are entirely valid. As usual, the US has not put any real pressure on Israel to change its destructive and destabilising behaviour.

“Looking ahead, it will be increasingly difficult to imagine the Global South taking the Biden administration’s rhetoric about human rights with anything more than a grain of salt. The hypocrisy from America is just too great”

The timing of this crisis is also particularly horrible given that President Joe Biden, who is seeking re-election next year, doesn’t want to appear to be giving Israel anything less than ironclad support.

As the world witnesses Israel’s war crimes in Gaza carried out with Washington’s blessing, the US’s capacity to be taken seriously when criticising Russia’s rogue behaviour in Ukraine has been severely, and most likely permanently, damaged.

Looking ahead, it will be increasingly difficult to imagine the Global South taking the Biden administration’s rhetoric about human rights with anything more than a grain of salt. The hypocrisy from America is just too great.

“It’s been an unseemly spectacle to see Washington and its European allies support Israel as it cuts off aid, water, and food to besieged civilians in Gaza,” Aron Lund, a fellow at Century International and a Middle East analyst, told The New Arab.

“It is exactly what these same nations denounced the Syrian regime for doing in Homs, Ghouta, Aleppo, and other places. They didn’t mince words when Russia stepped up to support Damascus and vetoed UN condemnations. Now when their own ally blocked aid and food in the same way, they couldn’t muster even mild criticism,” added Lund.

A foreign policy blunder

It is increasingly difficult to deny the major failures of Washington’s foreign policy in the Middle East. While continuing many aspects of the Trump administration’s approach to the region, the Biden administration has made expanding the scope of the Abraham Accords central to its agenda in the Arab world.

The White House naively believed it could bring Libya into a normalisation deal with Israel, which backfired disastrously.

The Biden administration has also invested massive amounts of diplomatic energy into trying to pull Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords – something that no expert can imagine happening any time soon given ongoing developments in Israel and Palestine.

“The recent events have punched a giant hole into the paper-thin superficial Biden administration policy on the Middle East, which has deluded itself into believing that establishing close ties with apartheid Israel and dictatorships in the Middle East is some kind of recipe for stability,” Sarah Leah Whitson, the Executive Director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), told TNA.

What is being painfully demonstrated is that lasting peace and security for Israel will not come from diplomatic deals with Arab states such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which were arguably never confrontational toward Israel.

It can only come from a lasting solution to the unresolved Palestinian question. Attempts to bury the Palestinian issue based on the assumption that the Palestinian cause stopped mattering to the Arab world have proven extremely misguided.

“As with Israel, one of the assumptions of US foreign policy in the Middle East has been annihilated in the past three weeks: that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be contained, and that the region could move on,” said Dr Thomas Juneau, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, in an interview with TNA.

“This was predictably an unsustainable assumption, but it was one of the premises of American foreign policy under Biden (and Trump) nevertheless. There are still some positive elements to the Abraham Accords – the stabilisation of relations among Israel and key Arab states – but to be sustainable, it needs to be accompanied by genuine, not fictitious, progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front,” added Dr Juneau.

“Recent events have punched a giant hole into the paper-thin superficial Biden administration policy on the Middle East”

Arab backlash

Anger at the US is growing in the Middle East. Large scale protests in capitals from Amman to Manama, Sana‘a to Baghdad, and Rabat to Beirut speak to the widespread support that the Palestinians are receiving across the Arab world.

In response to public opinion in their own countries, Arab leaders and policymakers have had no choice but to strongly condemn Israel and express support for the Palestinian cause.

Each Arab government faces slightly different circumstances given differences in these countries’ relationships with the US and Israel. Yet, the dynamics across the region are putting pressure on all of them to speak up in defence of the Palestinians and, at least in the case of most Arab states, refrain from directly criticising Hamas.

It was notable that Saudi Arabia, which only several weeks ago was flirting with normalisation with Israel, referred to Israelis as “occupation forces” in its response to Hamas’ Operation al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October.

Despite the Abraham Accords, the UAE, in its capacity as the only Arab state currently on the UN Security Council, has been highly critical of Israel and condemned various aspects of its response to Hamas’ surprise attack. As the humanitarian suffering in Gaza worsens, it’s safe to assume that such criticisms from the UAE will increase.

However, this appears to be about safeguarding regimes from internal legitimacy crises rather than a true commitment to the well-being of the Palestinians.

“It is heartening to see that kind of a pretty united Arab response, but I think it probably has more to do with their concerns about popular unrest in their own countries and wanting to temper that than any pure or genuine concern for Palestinians,” Whitson said.

“All Arab states want Washington to be more mindful of Palestinian and Arab interests, but they’re not equally vocal about it,” explained Lund.

The failure of Biden’s Middle East foreign policy threatens to undermine US standing in the region as well as the US president’s position in the upcoming election. [Getty]

“Governments like that in Syria, which is already hostile to the United States, delight in the opportunity to denounce Washington’s support for Israeli policies,” Lund added.

“Some Arab states, including US-allied nations in the Gulf and states that normalised their ties with Israel, mainly seem to be turning up the volume on Palestine for domestic reasons, or to avoid exposing themselves to criticism from rivals.”

Lund explained how many of these Washington-friendly Arab states are not comfortable confronting the Biden administration about their problems with blind support for Israel.

“You see them criticising Israel in harsher terms than on a normal day, but they haven’t said much about the US support that enables Israel’s actions,” noted Lund.

“On the other hand, I think most realise that if this situation is going to be de-escalated somehow in the future, it’ll have to be the United States that leads the way.”

A time to reassess US foreign policy

When it comes to the White House’s approach to the Middle East, the Biden administration would be wise to change course and ask some tough questions about how we arrived here. But this is unlikely for two principal reasons, said Whitson.

First, Team Biden, “continues to calculate based on short-term interests – namely the upcoming elections – and continues to believe that [Biden’s] victory in the polls is tied to demonstrating extreme support for Israel,” which Whitson sees as a “growing miscalculation”.

Second, the “deeply held personal biases of the Biden administration, of people in the State Department who are not approaching this conflict with clear eyes, with independent thinking, with thinking that prioritises the interests of the American people,” explained Whitson.

“Rather, as Secretary Blinken amply demonstrated during his visit to Israel, their approach to Israel is driven by their own personal, familial feelings of affinity for Israel.”

Source : New Arab

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The EU’s foreign policy chief on Saturday expressed “regret” over the resumption of Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, emphasizing Tel Aviv’s obligation to respect international humanitarian law and the laws of war, which he described as “not only a moral obligation but also a legal one.”

“The way Israel exercises its right to self-defence matters. It’s imperative that Israel respects International Humanitarian Law and the laws of war,” Josep Borrell wrote on X.

His remarks came after the Israeli army resumed attacks on Gaza after declaring the end of a week-long humanitarian pause on Friday morning, for which Borrell expressed regret, fearing that the already high civilian death toll would rise further.

Reiterating his call for Israel to respect international law, he stressed that this is “not only a moral obligation but a legal one as well.”

He also mentioned the increasing violence in the occupied West Bank. Citing the UN figures, Borrell said 271 Palestinians have been killed by Israelis since Oct. 7.

“It’s not sufficient humanitarian pauses should be resumed, while simultaneously working towards a comprehensive political solution for all the Palestinian territories,” he added.

The Israeli army resumed bombing the Gaza Strip early Friday after ending a week-long humanitarian pause with the Palestinian resistance group Hamas.

At least 178 Palestinians have been killed and 589 injured on Friday in Israeli airstrikes, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

The humanitarian pause began on Nov. 24 as part of an agreement between Israel and Hamas to temporarily halt fighting to allow hostage swaps and aid delivery.

More than 15,000 Palestinians, mostly children and women, have been killed in Israeli attacks since Oct. 7 following a cross-border attack by Hamas.

Around 1,200 Israelis have also been killed, according to official estimates.

Source : AA

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The EU foreign policy chief on Wednesday said that he is “appalled” by the high number of casualties caused by Israeli airstrikes on the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.

“Building on EU Council’s clear stance that Israel has the right to defend itself in line with international humanitarian law and ensuring the protection of all civilians, I am appalled by the high number of casualties following the bombing by Israel of the Jabalia refugee camp,” Josep Borrell said on X.

“The right to self-defence should always be balanced by the obligation to spare civilians to the greatest extent possible,” Borrell said, echoing UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ remarks.

Underlining that the EU has been calling since last week for humanitarian corridors and pauses for humanitarian needs, he said: “With each passing day, as the situation becomes more and more dire, this is more urgent than ever.”

“The safety and the protection of civilians is not only a moral, but a legal obligation,” he stressed.

Airstrikes on the refugee camp killed and injured hundreds of people, according to the Interior Ministry in the besieged enclave, which said Israel dropped six bombs on the residential area.

The Israeli army has expanded its air and ground attacks on the Gaza Strip, which has been under relentless airstrikes since the Palestinian group Hamas launched a surprise cross-border offensive on Oct. 7.

Paltel Group, the company providing communications services in Palestine, reported another widespread outage of internet and phone service in Gaza early Wednesday.

Besides a large number of casualties – at least 8,525 Palestinians and 1,538 in Israel – and displacement, basic supplies are running low for the 2.3 million people in Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected growing calls for a cease-fire, saying it would be a “surrender” to Hamas and “that will not happen.”

Source : AA

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The State of Israel has occupied the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem since the 1967 war. The Palestinians living in those territories quite simply do not have the same rights as Israeli settlers there. For instance, it’s rare for the Israeli state to grant Palestinians building permits even as settlements expand.

Israeli leaders rarely articulate in clear terms that separate legal systems rule over Israeli settlers and Palestinians in the same area. To do so would be to recognize the split realities, which Palestinian, Israeli, and international human rights groups have documented as apartheid. But Israeli politicians have preferred to obscure this reality.

That is, until an incendiary settler-politician serving in the extreme-right Israel government caused a stir in Israel last week when he described the situation almost exactly as human rights groups have — not accidentally, as a slip of the tongue, but very much on purpose.

“My right, the right of my wife and my children to move around Judea and Samaria” — the biblical names for the West Bank — “is more important than freedom of movement for the Arabs,” National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir told Israel’s version of Meet the Press. “My right to life comes before freedom of movement.”

“Sorry, Mohammad, but that’s the reality,” Ben-Gvir paused to say, turning to a member of the TV panel, journalist Mohammad Magadli, who is a Palestinian citizen of Israel.

It was a brash encapsulation of the policies underpinning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current far-right coalition, and even its softer and more PR-friendly predecessors.

Ben-Gvir justified the intensive security regime at a time of a growing grassroots Palestinian movement willing to violently resist the Israeli state, and as settler violence against Palestinians has spiked.

Diapers, food, rent– around the world, prices are rising. So, what can we do about it?

That clip quickly traveled around the internet. Ben-Gvir’s disparaging aside — “Sorry, Mohammad” — became a meme. One Israeli editor wrote that “Sorry, Mohammad,” would be a “fitting name for the Israeli national anthem.” The prominent Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem started posting violent videos and photos of the Israeli occupation captioned with the words “Sorry, Mohammad.” Some accounts began posting historical photos of racism and discrimination — from the Jim Crow years, apartheid-era South Africa and Nazi Germany — with those words. (Some posts appear to have been removed or deleted for violating social media terms of service.)

Because Ben-Gvir’s tone may have seemed provocative, but what he stated on TV is actually just the policy of the State of Israel.

The controversy over Ben-Gvir’s remarks, briefly explained

Ben-Gvir’s statement caused a backlash. The US State Department spokesperson condemned his remarks. And two days later, Netanyahu’s office weighed in on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, to undo the damage.

“Israel allows maximum freedom of movement in Judea and Samaria for both Israelis and Palestinians,” the statement said. “Unfortunately, Palestinian terrorists take advantage of this freedom of movement to murder Israeli women, children and families by ambushing them at certain points on different routes.”

“This is what Minister Ben-Gvir meant when he said ‘the right to life precedes freedom of movement’,” the prime minister’s office went on to explain.

New grassroots Palestinian militant groups and individual acts of terrorism have increased this year. But it has also been an exceedingly deadly year for Palestinians in the West Bank. Under Netanyahu’s government, settlers have been emboldened, leading to more settler violence, the further annexation of Palestinian land, and settlement expansion. That encroachment has in turn fueled violent Palestinian resistance. This dynamic creates situations like one earlier this summer, when an Israeli military raid in Jenin killed 12 Palestinians, seemingly leading to a retaliatory Palestinian shooting of four Israelis near a settlement, which then led to more settler violence against Palestinians, all within three days.

Netanyahu, then, was not so much condemning Ben-Gvir’s policy stance as his tone.

Israeli attorney Daniel Seidemann pointed out that Netanyahu’s team posted on X on Friday evening after sunset, that is during the Jewish sabbath when Ben-Gvir and his colleagues from the Jewish Power Party would likely be offline. “He posted it only in English, not in Hebrew, so as not to anger his base,” Seidemann explained.

And when Ben-Gvir got online after sunset on Saturday, he stood by his comments. “Not only do I not regret my words, I am saying them yet again,” he said, with an Israeli flag behind him and Netanyahu’s official portrait sitting on the bookshelf.

Amichai Eliyahu, Israel’s minister of heritage and a member of Ben-Gvir’s party, added another example to the genre on Sunday.

“As soon as someone threatens my rights to live, I slightly reduce his civil rights,” he said in a TV segment.

“Limit just a tiny bit?” TV anchor Attila Somfalvi responded. “It’s called apartheid, I think, in the dictionary.”

What Ben-Gvir’s comments really reveal

Ben-Gvir is not only any ordinary provocateur shaped by the racist ideology of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane. He is not just a lawyer who has represented Jewish terrorists who have killed Palestinians. He is a powerful minister in Israel’s far-right government.

Now he has laid plain what Palestinians endure every day. They lack rights so that settlers like Ben-Gvir can move freely through the occupied West Bank. Palestinians and Israeli settlers travel on separate roads in the territory; they are subject to different legal systems. “The elevation of Jewish rights to move (and most civil and human rights) over Palestinian freedom of movement (and other rights) is as old as the state itself,” Dahlia Scheindlin notes in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Netanyahu has advanced a controversial overhaul of the Israeli judiciary that, among other issues, would enable policies of further annexation of Palestinian land. The ethno-nationalist partners in the governing coalition support such bureaucratic measures. In particular, the government’s recent moves of “transferring many powers overseeing the West Bank from military to civilian leaders—in contravention of international law,” as Israeli lawyer Michael Sfard notes, openly advance “a policy of unilateral annexation.”

In 2017, Bezalel Smotrich, now Netanyahu’s finance minister, published a radical manifesto entitled “Israel’s Decisive Plan” that advocates the expulsion of Palestinians who seek an independent state. His self-described “pragmatic document” also detailed how to further advance the settlements and illegal outposts, what he calls “Victory Through Settlement.”

For Palestinians, none of these comments come as a surprise. This is the reality of the occupied territories. But it’s somehow clarifying for Ben-Gvir to say them aloud — and shows that Netanyahu’s most extreme coalition partners are operating from a place of comfort.

Source: VOX

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