LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
June 05/2019
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

The Bulletin's Link on the lccc Site
http://data.eliasbejjaninews.com/eliasnews19/english.june05.19.htm

News Bulletin Achieves Since 2006
Click Here to enter the LCCC Arabic/English news bulletins Achieves since 2006

Bible Quotations For today
Jesus Droves Sellers and Money Changers Out Of the Temple Saying: Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John 02/13-25:”The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’ His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’The Jews then said to him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone.

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News published on June 04-05/2019
No Lone Jehadi Wolfs/Elias Bejjani/June 04/2019
Hezbollah members rise to 1,050 in Germany amid growing Jew-hatred- intel
Aoun Chairs Security Meeting to Discuss Tripoli Attack
Aoun Says Tripoli Attack Won’t Harm Stability as Hariri Urges 'Uprooting Terror Remnants'
Tripoli Attack Sparks New Bou Saab-Mustaqbal War of Words
Hassan Stresses Security Forces Readiness, Othman Says Tripoli Attacker was Troubled
Lebanon’s Interior Minister: Deadly Tripoli Shooting a ‘Lone Wolf Attack’
Moody's: Lebanon Draft Budget Won't Deliver Significant Change to Debt Trajectory
Iran Mulling to Release Nizar Zakka
Lebanon: Former PMs Criticize Nasrallah
Aid Groups: Lebanon Demolitions Will Make Syrian Kids Homeless
Lebanese-American Witness in Mueller Probe Arrested for Child Porn
Sayegh: Budget Is a Prelude to Lebanon's Bankruptcy
Kataeb Leader Samy Gemayel Salutes Army, ISF in Wake of Deadly
Bechara Asmar Visits Bkirki for First Time Since Insulting Comments

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on June 04-05/2019
Iran FM Says Negotiations Hinge on 'Lifting Sanctions'
Russia Blocks U.N. Criticism of Attacks in Northwest Syria
Arab Unions Meeting to Be Held Under Slogan of ‘Jerusalem, Capital of Palestine’
Bouteflika Era Business Magnate to Stand Trial in Algerian Courts
Mysterious Crop Fires Ruin Syrian, Iraqi Harvests
Security Alert in Egypt for Eid Celebrations, Africa Cup
Morocco: Three Pro-ISIS Members Arrested
UN Condemns Excessive Use of Force Against Sudan Demonstrators
Sudan Opposition Rejects Military Council’s Call for Early Polls
Statement by Foreign Affairs Minister on 30th anniversary of Tiananmen Square

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on June 04-05/2019
No Lone Jehadi Wolfs/Elias Bejjani/June 04/2019
Hezbollah members rise to 1,050 in Germany amid growing Jew-hatred- intel/Benjamin Weinthal/Jerusalem Post/June 04/2019
Syria: Iran is not leaving, despite U.S. and Israeli pressure/Seth J. Frantzman/Jerusalem Post/June 04/2019
Opinion/Jared Kushner Just Killed the Palestinian Peace Camp/Muhammad Shehada/Haaretz/June 04/2019
America Needs a New Way of War/Tobin Harshaw/Bloomberg/June 04/2019
May’s Exit Points to a Crisis of Thought and Identity/Eyad Abu Shakra/Asharq Al Awsat/June 04/2019
The Books He Loved but Others Shouldn't Read/Amir Taheri/Asharq Al Awsat/June 04/2019
June 4: China's Longest Night/Gordon G. Chang/Gatestone Institute/June 04/2019
A Syrian in Jerusalem/Finally face to face, after growing up learning about the other/Ahmad Danny Ramadan/Tablet/June 04/2019
Is China ready to end its policy of neutrality/Abdulrahman Al-Rashed/Arab News/June 04/2019
Competing interests create bizarre situation in Idlib/Talmiz Ahmad/Arab News/June 04/2019
After initial triumphalism, Netanyahu finds himself defeated/Yossi Mekelberg/Arab News/June 04/2019

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News published on June 04-05/2019
No Lone Jehadi Wolfs
Elias Bejjani/June 04/2019
The Lone Wolf Jehadi theory is mostly a camouflaging one. In reality behind every Jihadist crime there is an organization and most commonly an intelligence one. The Tripoli Jihadist most probably falls in this category.
مقولة الذئاب الجهادية المنفردة في عالم الإجرام الجهادي هي تعمية للحقائق، فوراء كل مجرم جهادي ووراء كل جريمة جهادية تنظيم وغالباً ما يكون مخابراتي، ومجرم طرابلس في الغالب يندرج في هذا السياق

Hezbollah members rise to 1,050 in Germany amid growing Jew-hatred- intel
Benjamin Weinthal/Jerusalem Post/June 04/2019
Merkel rejects appeals to ban Lebanese terrorist group.
A new German intelligence report asserts the number of Hezbollah members and supporters has climbed from 950 in 2017 to 1,050 in 2018 amid rising Jew-hatred in the federal republic. The Jerusalem Post reviewed the hair-raising new numbers from the intelligence document of the German state of Lower Saxony. The 192-page intelligence report authored by the intelligence agents from the state’s security service noted 150 Hezbollah operatives are situated in Lower Saxony. The report covers 2018 and was released on May 22, 2019.
“Hezbollah denies the right of existence of the State of Israel and fights it with terrorist means,” the intelligence report wrote. “In Germany, the followers of Hezbollah maintain organizational and ideological and cohesion in local mosques associations that are financed primarily by donations.” “Hezbollah is against the idea of ​​international understanding and the peaceful coexistence of peoples,” the report noted. “The ‘party’ of Hezbollah was founded under the authority of the Islamic Republic of Iran, representing the most radical party of the Lebanese Shi’ite community.” The report said the model for Hezbollah is the Iranian regime’s revolutionary system and the “teaching of the Iranian revolutionary leader [Ruhollah] Khomeini.” The intelligence report cited Hezbollah 30 times and said Hezbollah supporters are active in the following cities and town in Lower Saxony: Hannover, Osnabrück and Uelzen. The report noted Hezbollah supporters are also present in the region of south Lower Saxony. The document mentions travel of functionaries between Lebanon and Germany for the purpose of connecting to Hezbollah.
The reported increase of Hezbollah members in Germany comes amid urgent calls to ban all of Hezbollah from the US government and Germany’s Central Council of Jews. On Friday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel that he wishes Germany would “follow Britain’s example” and outlaw the terrorist group. The United Kingdom proscribed all of Hezbollah a terrorist entity in February. In addition to the UK, the US, Canada, the Netherlands, the Arab League and Israel all classify Hezbollah a terrorist entity. Germany and the EU defined Hezbollah’s so-called military wing a terrorist entity while allowing for its “political” wing to raise funds, recruit new members and spread jihadi and lethal antisemitic ideologies in Europe. Hezbollah’s leadership, in contrast to Germany and the EU, defines its organization as an unified entity without wings.
US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell tweeted on Sunday: “Allowing Hezbollah supporters to organize freely is creating instability and fear. Hezbollah is on the hunt for more money to fund more terror – they must be stopped.” Grenell spoke at a demonstration against the pro-Hezbollah, pro-Iranian regime al-Quds Day march on Sunday in Berlin. He wrote on Twitter, “Today we marched against Al Quds in Berlin – and my team asked me to wear a bulletproof vest because of their hate and support for terrorism. This group should be widely condemned.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her interior minister, Horst Seehofer, ignored an urgent plea from the country’s nearly 100,000-member Jewish community to outlaw Hezbollah.
When repeatedly asked last week by The Jerusalem Post if the German government – in response to a demand by the Central Council of Jews – plans to ban Hezbollah, Merkel and Seehofer refused to answer. The president of the council, Dr. Josef Schuster, said on Monday that “a full ban of Hezbollah’s organization has already happened in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom,” adding that “Hezbollah is heavily financed by Iran, and poses, in its entirety, a threat to the entire world.” The US Embassy in Germany wrote on its Twitter feed on Monday: “Germany’s federal courts decided years ago that Hezbollah is a unified organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Symbols of Hezbollah are banned, why not the entire organization?”“We were concerned to see Jews discouraged from wearing the yarmulke in public out of safety concerns. None of us should shrink in the face of prejudice,” Pompeo said at a press conference in Berlin with Berlin. Last Saturday, Germany’s federal commissioner to combat antisemitism Dr. Felix Klein announced: “I can’t tell Jews to wear the kippah everywhere all the time in Germany.” Hezbollah has been involved in antisemitic incidents in Germany. Klein wrote that 81% of Jews in Germany feel threatened by Muslim-based antisemitism.

Aoun Chairs Security Meeting to Discuss Tripoli Attack
Kataeb.org/June 04/2019/President Michel Aoun on Tuesday chaired a security meeting at the Baabda Palace to discuss the deadly attack that jolted Tripoli. During the meeting, Aoun extended his condolences to the families of the four security and military personnel that were killed in the attack, stressing that the fight against terrorism is a continuous task that requires constant vigilance and preparedness. The president also outlined the importance of coordination and cooperation between security agencies, calling for intensive follow-ups on terror suspects and pre-emptive security operations. He also requested "exceptional" security measures to ensure stability throughout the holidays and the summer season. Security officials briefed Aoun on the details relating to the Tripoli attack amid preliminary information indicating that it was driven by vengeful motives against the Army and security forces. The meeting was attended by Interior Minister Rayya Hassan, Defense Minister Elias Bou Saab, Army Commander Joseph Aoun, Internal Security Forces chief Imad Othman, head of the Army's Intelligence Unit Tony Mansour and head of the ISF's Information

Aoun Says Tripoli Attack Won’t Harm Stability as Hariri Urges 'Uprooting Terror Remnants'
Naharnet/June 04/2019/President Michel Aoun reassured Tuesday that the overnight deadly attack by an Islamic State lone gunman in Tripoli will not affect stability in the country, as Prime Minister Saad Hariri called for “uprooting the remnants of terrorism.” Saluting “the souls of the four army and Internal Security Forces martyrs who fell in Tripoli on Eid’s eve,” Aoun underlined that “any tampering with security will meet a decisive and quick response.”“What happened in Tripoli will not affect stability in the country,” he reassured. Aoun also called on citizens to cooperate with security agencies and warned of “rumors that sow anxiousness.”He added: “The constant readiness of the army and security forces has the ability to protect citizens’ safety across Lebanon.”Prime Minister Saad Hariri, currently in Saudi Arabia, for his part contacted Interior Minister Raya al-Hassan, Army Commander General Joseph Aoun and Director-General of the Internal Security Forces Major General Imad Othman to discuss the incident. Hariri expressed his condolences to the Army Command, the ISF command and “the families of the martyrs who fell in the confrontation with the terrorist group,” underscoring the need to take all necessary measures to protect the security of Tripoli and its people and “uproot the remnants of terrorism.”Commending “the sacrifices of the army, the ISF and the other security institutions and the courage of the officers, soldiers and members who are defending the security and safety of the Lebanese,” Hariri called on Tripoli’s residents and dignitaries to “support the army and the security forces, and to cooperate with the competent agencies to “uncover the hotbeds of terrorism and eradicate it.” Hariri concluded: “Terrorism has struck the joy of Eid in Tripoli, but this noble city will remain stubbornly defiant in the face of extremism and those who distort the true values of Islam. We will not back down from repeating with the people of Tripoli on the morning of Eid al-Fitr: Eid Mubarak Tripoli.”A lone gunman using a motorcycle fired on police and army vehicles in different parts of Tripoli on Monday night, killing two police officers and two soldiers and wounding several others before blowing himself up later when confronted by troops. The army identified the gunman as Abdul Rahman Mabsout, but gave no other details. LBCI said Mabsout was a former member of the Islamic State group who fought with the extremist movement in Syria. It said he had been detained when he returned to Lebanon in 2016 and was released a year later. The military statement said the shooter first fired at a branch of the Lebanese Central Bank, then shot at police and later at an army vehicle.

Tripoli Attack Sparks New Bou Saab-Mustaqbal War of Words
Naharnet/June 04/2019/The deadly armed attack in Tripoli has sparked a new war of words between Defense Minister Elias Bou Saab of the Free Patriotic Movement and al-Mustaqbal Movement Secretary-General Ahmed Hariri. The row started after Bou Saab said Prime Minister Saad Hariri had not called him after the attack. “PM Saad Hariri did not call me after the security incident and I’m not waiting for him to call me. Perhaps he considers himself to be more concerned with the Internal Security Forces,” Bou Saab said in response to a question during an interview with Radio Sawt El Mada. “The terrorist operation that was carried out by the terrorist Abdul Rahman Mabsout is still mysterious and ambiguous and we’re before a person who had been jailed on charges of belonging to terrorist organizations,” Bou Saab said. “I don’t want to talk ahead of the investigations but any political interferences would eventually be exposed in such cases,” the minister added. He later tweeted that “after looking into a part of the file of the terrorist Abdul Rahman Mabsout,” he has decided to order a probe to determine how he had been “arrested, sentenced and released from prison.”“We will not let the blood of martyrs go in vain and we will shoulder our responsibility before the Lebanese,” Bou Saab added. Ahmed Hariri snapped back swiftly, saying the defense minister “does not have the jurisdiction to specify to his boss whom he should talk to.”“The issue of driving wedges between the army and the ISF is suspicious, and the premier is saying that ‘the army is one eye and the ISF is the other,’ but it seems that someone likes to play ‘the role of the one-eyed,’” Hariri tweeted. “Grief is in every Lebanese house and not a single Lebanese does not feel that the servicemen’s martyrdom is not a personal loss and that terror is targeting everyone, so there is no need for rejected allusions,” the Mustaqbal secretary general added. “We as a political party are the first line of moderation and the line of defense for Lebanon’s dignity. Enough with the maneuvers and manipulation,” Hariri went on to say.
Bou Saab and Hariri had engaged in a war of words last week over the Military Court’s controversial acquittal of Lt. Col. Suzanne al-Hajj in the file of fabricating evidence to frame the actor Ziad Itani in a spying for Israel case. A lone gunman using a motorcycle fired on police and army vehicles in different parts of Tripoli on Monday night, killing two police officers and two soldiers and wounding several others before blowing himself up later when confronted by troops. The army identified the gunman as Abdul Rahman Mabsout, but gave no other details. LBCI TV said Mabsout was a former member of the Islamic State group who fought with the extremist movement in Syria. It said he had been detained when he returned to Lebanon in 2016 and was released a year later.

Hassan Stresses Security Forces Readiness, Othman Says Tripoli Attacker was Troubled
Naharnet/June 04/2019/Interior Minister Raya al-Hassan on Tuesday stressed that security forces maintain full readiness to tackle any security incident, in the wake of the deadly overnight attack in the northern city of Tripoli. “Security in the country will remain controlled and all security and military agencies are united and integrated,” al-Hassan said at a press conference after inspecting the city and the clashes zone. Authorities “will not allow the violation of security in any region in Lebanon by groups whose objectives and background are suspicious,” she underlined. She added: “The terrorist act is condemned and rejected and it ended up with the terrorist blowing himself up with an explosive vest he was wearing.”“Terrorism enjoys no support in Tripoli nor in all Lebanese regions,” al-Hassan said. She had earlier announced at the site of the siege that ended with the gunman’s death that the incident was an “individual” one. “We put an end to it and we hope it won’t be repeated and there should be full readiness,” the minister added, reassuring that authorities are “prepared and on alert for any future incident.”Internal Security Forces chief Maj. Gen. Imad Othman, who accompanied al-Hassan on her tour, for his part said that the attacker was in an “unstable psychological state.”“What happened was an individual incident and a painful act of terror and we are maintaining full readiness,” he added. A lone gunman using a motorcycle fired on police and army vehicles in different parts of Tripoli on Monday night, killing two police officers and two soldiers and wounding several others before blowing himself up later when confronted by troops. The army identified the gunman as Abdul Rahman Mabsout, but gave no other details. LBCI said Mabsout was a former member of the Islamic State group who fought with the extremist movement in Syria. It said he had been detained when he returned to Lebanon in 2016 and was released a year later. The military statement said the shooter first fired at a branch of the Lebanese Central Bank, then shot at police and later at an army vehicle.

Lebanon’s Interior Minister: Deadly Tripoli Shooting a ‘Lone Wolf Attack’
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 4 June, 2019/Lebanese Interior Minister Raya Al-Hassan said Tuesday that a gunman was working alone when he went on a shooting spree that killed four security personnel in the northern city of Tripoli. Al-Hassan said the shooting by the man identified as a former ISIS member, Abdul-Rahman Mabsout, is a "lone wolf attack", and the situation is under control. She spoke to reporters in Tripoli, hours after Mabsout, riding a motorcycle, opened fire on police and army vehicles in the city, killing two police officers and two soldiers before breaking into a residential building and hiding there. He later blew himself up by detonating an explosive belt when confronted by troops. The attacker had earlier been in jail on charges of ISIS membership, a source said. The rare shooting, which began late Monday, shook the coastal city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Prime Minister Saad Hariri extended his condolences to the families of the dead and said all measures must be taken to protect Tripoli and "weed out any remnants of terrorism". Al-Hassan described the attack as "a new form of terrorism". "Can I tell you we can curb it 100 percent? We can't curb it. Countries that are perhaps more advanced than us have not been able to," she told a press conference. Internal Security Forces chief General Imad Othman, accompanying her, said the agency constantly keeps tabs on suspects and sleeper cells."But when someone reaches a level of desperation in some cases, and carries out a crazy action, this leads us to not know about him (ahead of time)," he told reporters.

Moody's: Lebanon Draft Budget Won't Deliver Significant Change to Debt Trajectory
Reuters/June 04/2019/Lebanon’s 2019 draft budget plan to tackle its pressing fiscal situation through spending cuts, revenue increases and refinancing of T-bills will likely fail to deliver a significant shift in the country’s debt trajectory, ratings agency Moody’s said.
Heavily indebted Lebanon unveiled a plan to bring its public finances under control in late May but faces an uphill struggle to restore the investor confidence that is needed to stave off crisis. The budget - which has been sent to parliament for debate and approval - aims to cut the fiscal deficit to 7.6% of GDP from 11.5% in 2018 and implies the primary balance will turn into a surplus of 1.7% from a deficit of around 1% of GDP. “This adjustment is achieved primarily via spending cuts and a limited increase in revenue,” Moody’s analyst Elisa Parisi-Capone wrote in a note to clients, dated May 30. “According to our debt projections, the implied primary balance adjustment and the previously announced interest savings from the refinancing of high interest-rate T-bills with lower interest-rate T-bills with participation of the central bank and commercial banks, remain insufficient to significantly change the debt trajectory because of the persistent interest rate - growth rate differential.”Moody’s said its base case was that the primary surplus would stand at 1.5% of GDP in 2019 and continually increase to 3.5% of GDP by 2023. However, assuming that interest bills remained at 10-11% and limited appetite to reduce the wage bill further due to a public pushback, the fiscal deficit would remain around 7.0-7.5%, Moody’s calculated.

Iran Mulling to Release Nizar Zakka
Beirut - Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 4 June, 2019/The lawyer for Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese man held in Iran since 2015, has said that his client will be released in the "next few days." Majed Dimashkiyeh told The Associated Press that Zakka's expected release comes after mediations by top Lebanese officials, including President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister Saad Hariri. Some Iranian media outlets reported earlier Monday that Zakka would be released soon without giving further details. Zakka, who has permanent US residency, went missing in 2015, during his fifth trip to Iran. Two weeks later, Iranian state TV reported that he was in custody and suspected of having "deep links" to US intelligence services. Zakka, 52, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in September 2016 and handed a $4.2 million fine after a security court convicted him of espionage. Zakka's family, which denies the allegations, told Asharq Al-Awsat on Monday that it hasn’t been officially informed of the man’s possible release.

Lebanon: Former PMs Criticize Nasrallah
Beirut - Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 4 June, 2019/Former prime ministers Fouad Siniora, Najib Mikati and Tammam Salam accused on Monday Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah of undermining the premier’s right to announce the Lebanese position at the Arab and Islamic summits in expressing solidarity with Arab countries. Their strongly-worded statement came in response to comments delivered last week by Nasrallah, who said the Lebanese delegation's stance at the Makkah summits is "rejected and condemned," noting that "it does not conform to the government's policy statement or dissociation policy."Mikati, Siniora and Salam said that according to Article 64 of the Lebanese Constitution, the Prime Minister should represent the government and speak on its behalf. In a statement issued after their meeting at the residence of Salam in Beirut, the three ex-PMs expressed their support to the decisions issued at the summits, held under the patronage of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman bin Abdulaziz. They also stressed the importance of solidarity among Arab states in the face of foreign threats and interventions. Siniora, Mikati and Salam expressed regret at Nasrallah’s remarks against the right of the Prime Minister to represent Lebanon’s stance in the two summits. Amid the ongoing tension between Hariri’s Mustaqbal Movement and Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, the three former officials called on President Michel Aoun to intervene to put an end to what they termed “provocative practices” that are undermining the presidency’s prestige and position. They also stopped at “some surprising political stances and practices launched by some ministers and politicians, which aim to open debate and divisive issues that are not useful to open them, especially since they had been settled in the Taif Accord and in the Lebanese Constitution.”

Aid Groups: Lebanon Demolitions Will Make Syrian Kids Homeless
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 4 June, 2019/Lebanon's planned demolition of concrete shelters housing Syrian refugees near the border could make at least 15,000 children homeless, aid groups warned Tuesday. The authorities in April set a June 9 deadline for Syrian refugees living in shelters built with materials other than timber and plastic sheeting in Arsal to bring their homes into compliance, Agence France Presse reported. In Arsal, which lies in northeastern Lebanon, more than 5,000 structures made with concrete are slated for demolition. Similar measures could affect other communities in the near future, it said. Lebanon allows only informal camps for Syrian refugees to prevent permanent settlements that would affect its delicate demographic balance. Three international aid agencies -- Save the Children, World Vision and Terre des Hommes -- warned that children were most at risk and urged the government to hold off. "For a child who barely eats, and often doesn't go to school, losing a home is extremely traumatic. And we are talking about 15,000 children," said Piotr Sasin from the Swiss-based Terre des Hommes charity. The joint statement warned that the "demolition of many of these homes could result in the destruction of household water and sanitation systems, leaving children at high risk of illness and disease." Lebanon is home to an estimated 1.5 to 2 million refugees who have fled the conflict that erupted in 2011 when the Syrian regime repressed initially peaceful protests. Lebanon's economic and other woes are routinely blamed on Syrian refugees by local politicians and the government has ratcheted up the pressure to send them back.

Lebanese-American Witness in Mueller Probe Arrested for Child Porn
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/June 04/2019/George Nader, a well-connected Middle East fixer for the Trump campaign and a witness in the Russia meddling investigation, has been arrested for possessing child pornography, the Justice Department said. Nader, who joined meetings between top aides of President Donald Trump and Middle East officials and also lobbied for the United Arab emirates, was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on charges of "transporting visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct," the department said. The arrest was based on a 13-month-old sealed indictment that said Nader had sexually explicit pictures of children on his cell phone when he entered the United States on a previous trip on January 17, 2018. Nader, who has a history of child porn cases stretching back to 1985, faces a minimum of 15 years in prison and as much as 40 years.
Nader, 60, is Lebanese American, and a long-time go-between for governments in the Middle East and an adviser to the powerful crown prince of the UAE, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. He joined top UAE officials in a key meeting with Trump aides in December 2016 in which the prince sought to establish close relations with the incoming president. Weeks later Nader helped arrange a meeting in the Seychelles which brought together Trump emissary Erik Prince and a close adviser of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kirill Dmitriev, who was likewise seeking ties with the new administration. He was also reportedly involved in a UAE effort to funnel money through Elliott Broidy, a Trump business associate and Republican fundraiser, to influence congressional views on Qatar. Nader was arrested in the United States in 1985 for importing child pornography from the Netherlands, but the charges were dropped on a technicality. In 1991 he was charged again and sentenced to six months in jail. The records of that case were sealed, reportedly due to Nader's assisting the U.S. government in secret matters. He also reportedly spent one year in prison in the Czech Republic in the early 2000s for sex crimes involving minors. Last year, he was interviewed several times by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in the Russia meddling investigation as a cooperating witness.Mueller's report documents Nader's role in introducing Dmitriev to Prince, who discussed improving ties between the United States and Russia.

Sayegh: Budget Is a Prelude to Lebanon's Bankruptcy
Kataeb.org/June 04/2019/Kataeb's Deputy-President Salim Sayegh said that Lebanon is witnessing a state of ethical and political schizophrenia, adding that members of some parliamentary blocs are criticizing the budget which was drafted and approved by their comrades who are part of the government. "The budget is a prelude to Lebanon's bankruptcy," Sayegh warned in an interview on Voice of Lebanon radio station. The Kataeb official deemed the country's deficit as "structural", stressing the need to address smuggling which is covered and protected by non-state arms. "Smuggling and weapons are two sides of the same coin. Hezbollah must realize that it can no longer count on the corrupt system which it has long protected to cover it politically."Sayegh stressed that the presidential settlement which was sealed three years ago has started to collapse, saying that it is now "clinically dead" and is still to be pronounced dead.
"The settlement has ripped itself apart; it is still based on some petty common interests," he said. "The Free Patriotic Movement is just using media propaganda, verbal outbidding and empty promises to make itself look in control."Turning to the appeal presented by the Kataeb lawmakers and seven others to contest the government's electricity plan, Sayegh said that the Constitutional Council's decision to partially annul the project has hit its masterminds deep. "Those in charge of the Energy Ministry wanted this plan to help them evade the Tenders Department," he noted. "They tried to make up exceptions, but the decision issued by the Council has officially made it clear that the Tenders Department is the one and only authority that should be in charge of the entire tendering process." "We wanted to deal a harsh blow to them by hitting what would hurt them the most: evasion and shady deals," Sayegh stressed.

Kataeb Leader Samy Gemayel Salutes Army, ISF in Wake of Deadly
Kataeb.org/June 04/2019/Kataeb Leader Samy Gemayel on Tuesday extended his condolences to the Lebanese Army and the Internal Security Forces following the attack that jolted Tripoli. “Our condolences and prayers go to the Lebanese Army, the Internal Security Forces and the families of martyrs. They are the ones protecting this land and its people with their blood and sacrifices," Gemayel wrote on Twitter."They are proving that legitimate forces are the guarantee which unites, not divides. The Lebanese must rally around them during hardships,” he added. “The honorable people of Tripoli remain an exemplary model for embracing legitimacy and renouncing terrorism."

Bechara Asmar Visits Bkirki for First Time Since Insulting Comments
Kataeb.org/June 04/2019/Resigned head of the General Confederation of Lebanese Workers, Bechara Asmar, on Tuesday visited the Maronite Patriarchate seat in Bkirki, less than one month after the wave of public anger that his insulting comments against late Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir had caused.
Speaking following his meeting with Maronite Patriarch Bechara Al-Rahi, Asmar admitted to committing a mistake, saying, however, that the State had no right to arrest him. Asmar hoped that his relationship with the Maronite Patriarchate would remain intact, saying that Al-Rahi showed understanding and mercy "more than anyone can imagine".The resigned labor union chief reiterated that what happened was used to topple him, adding that nothing was a coincidence given the quantum leap he made during his mandate. During his visit to Bkirki, Asmar laid a wreath at the tomb of the late Patriarch Emeritus Nasrallah Sfeir.
Last month, Asmar was heard mocking the late cardinal, one day after he was laid to rest, being unaware that his microphone was already turned on before a press conference.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on June 04-05/2019
Iran FM Says Negotiations Hinge on 'Lifting Sanctions'
London - Adil Al-Salmi/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 4 June, 2019/Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called the United States sanctions an economic war, and said there could be no talks with it until sanctions are lifted, following US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s remarks that Washington was prepared to engage with Tehran without preconditions. Zarif accused the US of practicing economic terrorism against Tehran. Further, head of the Iranian judiciary Ebrahim Raisi – a key rival of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani - considered negotiations a US need and urged Iranian officials to abide by the goals set by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei regarding internal policies. The US-China trade war, which has been one of the most important international challenges in recent months, has aspects and consequences that can go beyond the bilateral relations of the two sides, said the Iranian foreign ministry, adding that the war has targeted the development and welfare of the people of the world. The United States is dealing with China with an acquisitive attitude and is trying to impose political considerations on economic realities, added the ministry. “We believe that the US efforts to maintain its previous position by imposing unconventional costs on others are doomed to failure, and are not consistent with the international pyramid of power amid the current rapid developments,” it revealed. In a related matter, ISNA news agency welcomed Monday the latest report of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization (IAEA) revealing that Iran’s stocks of nuclear materials are still within limits set by the 2015 nuclear deal. As of 20 May, Iran had 174.1 kg of enriched uranium, up from 163.8kg in February. Earlier this month, Iran announced that it will no more comply with the nuclear deal restrictions to protest economic sanctions imposed on Tehran after the US withdrawal from the agreement. ISNA – close to the Iranian government – reported Monday that Tehran’s decision to stop implementing some of the commitments was among the reasons that pushed Pompeo to call for negotiations without preconditions.

Russia Blocks U.N. Criticism of Attacks in Northwest Syria
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/June 04/2019/Russia has blocked a U.N. Security Council statement criticizing Syria's military campaign in the Idlib region that Western powers fear will lead to a humanitarian catastrophe. Russia said in a note seen by AFP that the proposed statement was "unbalanced" because it did not mention the towns of Hajin or Baguz, where civilians have suffered during US-backed fighting against the Islamic State group. Belgium, Germany and Kuwait had put forward the proposed text following two emergency meetings of the council on the worsening violence in the jihadist-held region. Russia last month blocked a separate statement also warning of a humanitarian catastrophe from an all-out assault on Idlib region, home to three million people. Council statements require unanimous support by all 15 members. Syria and its Russian ally have stepped up air strikes and shelling in Idlib since late April, forcing over 270,000 people to flee their homes. Russian Deputy Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy said Moscow objected to "everything" in the proposed statement and accused the drafters of attempting to stage a public relations stunt. "The positions are known," Polyanskiy told AFP. "Proposing such a document is playing in the PR field, not in the field of bringing a solution."The proposed text would have expressed "grave concern over the intensifying hostilities in northwestern Syria," including attacks on hospitals, clinics and schools. It warned of "a potential humanitarian catastrophe in the event of a full-scale military operation in northwestern Syria," according to the text seen by AFP. The proposed measure would have called on the parties to return to the ceasefire arrangement agreed by Russia and Turkey, a rebel backer, in September last year. Russia maintains that it is upholding the ceasefire and that only "terrorists" are being targeted in military operations. Most of Idlib is controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a group dominated by former members of al-Qaida's Syria affiliate which is on the UN terrorism list. Western powers fear an all-out assault on Idlib would be the bloodiest battle yet of Syria's devastating eight-year war.

Arab Unions Meeting to Be Held Under Slogan of ‘Jerusalem, Capital of Palestine’
Ramallah - Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 4 June, 2019/The Permanent Delegation of the State of Palestine to the Arab League announced that the 50th Ordinary Meeting of Arab Specialized Unions will be held in Cairo on June 12-13 under the title of “Jerusalem, the Capital of the State of Palestine.”In a statement on Monday, the Permanent Mission of Palestine (PAC) said that the decision to hold the meeting came as a result of work carried out by the mission with the General Secretariat of the Council of Arab Economic Unity, under the supervision of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants, in coordination with the Ministry of National Economy and the Palestinian Investment Fund. It added that the meeting was aimed at pushing the Arab private sector to support the Palestinian Cause through three axes: empowering the Palestinian economy, supporting the city of Jerusalem through the financing by the Arab private sector of the strategic plan for sectoral development in Jerusalem 2018-2022, in addition to the presentation of investment opportunities in Palestine through a meeting between the Investment Fund and a group of selected Arab entrepreneurs who are willing to invest in Palestine.

Bouteflika Era Business Magnate to Stand Trial in Algerian Courts
Algiers - Boualem Goumrassa/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 4 June, 2019/Algerian courts initiated legal proceedings against businessman Ali Haddad, who gained notoriety both as a former regime stalwart and one of the country's top construction moguls. His sentencing, however, was adjourned to June 17. Haddad is facing up to 18 months in jail. During interrogation, Haddad revealed details exposing ex-prime minister Abdelmalek Sellal for violating the law. Alongside a group of former regime keynote officials, Sellal and Haddad are being tried for corruption. Haddad, who is getting immense media coverage, was one of the closest businessmen to ousted president Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Among the charges pressed against Haddad, is the unlawful possession of two different Algerian passports. He was arrested last March at a border crossing with neighboring Tunisia, to where he was trying to escape. When arrested, Haddad was found with an astronomical amount of cash in euros. Despite the chase and arrest being reported by local media, Haddad denies that he was planning to flee the country, and says he was merely off to a recreational vacation in the neighboring African state. Haddad headed a group of business magnates that acted as the financial arm of Bouteflika’s regime for 20 years. He helped secure for the group major concessions, mega projects and soft loans from banks. Profiteering from power, Haddad is one of several ministers who are being brought to justice at the country’s Supreme Court, which is charged with prosecuting senior officials. Haddad, according to sources at the judiciary, owns some of Algeria’s largest contracting companies and has investments in many sectors. Although a strong case can be made against Haddad for exploiting public assets and services in his quest to become a billionaire, many observers suspect that the business mogul will be acquitted. Apart from Haddad, four other businessmen have been put to jail for building an economic empire from public money and through corruption.

Mysterious Crop Fires Ruin Syrian, Iraqi Harvests
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 4 June, 2019/London - Baghdad - Ibrahim Hamidi and Fadhel al-Nashmi/Mysterious fires have been raging in western Iraq and parts of Syria, ruining harvests amid conflicting reports about what triggered the blazes and the parties that stood behind them. In Syria, the fires have been caused by balloons, airstrikes and missiles. However, there is one objective: ruining people’s harvests as a retaliation against farmers or residents, or as an attempt by “war profiteers” to import crops from outside the country. Experts have estimated that more than 2,000 fires have been raging in fields, depriving them of valuable crops, particularly east of the Euphrates, and the battle zones in the north of Hama and south of Idlib. The Syrian regime says that fires had affected 3,600 acres of barley fields and 30,000 acres of farmland in Hassakeh, Raqqa, all the way to Aleppo province to the west. Syrian sources said parties seeking to prevent farmers from selling their harvests to the Syrian government have caused the fires. Some blame the Kurdish-self administration in eastern Syria to stop the harvests from reaching the regime, which sets the price of one kilogram of wheat at 185 Syrian liras, 35 liras higher than the price set by the administration. Others blame ISIS militants seeking to avenge their territorial losses in Syria and Iraq or Syrian regime forces battling to rout other armed groups and undermine the Kurdish-led administration, which now operates independently of the central government. Despite the exchange of blame, farmers are being deprived of valuable crops. Some sources said farmers have been left with the burden of battling raging fires with pieces of cloth, sacks and water trucks. In Iraq, thousands of acres of wheat and barley golden fields have been scorched by the fires before the harvest season. Official authorities swing the load of responsibility between ISIS, personal disputes or negligence. According to the UN, the fires are threatening to disrupt normal food production cycles and potentially reduce food security for months to come.

Security Alert in Egypt for Eid Celebrations, Africa Cup
Cairo/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 4 June, 2019/Egypt’s security apparatuses have been deployed to bolster security during Eid al-Fitr celebrations and the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) that will be held between June 21 and July 19. On Monday, security and police forces were deployed on major roads and tourist attractions amid an announcement by the Egyptian Interior Ministry that it has started upping security measures nationwide to protect citizens. The ministry said the deployed elements are trained in immediate response to deal firmly and decisively with whoever aims to disturb security and peace. Starting Tuesday, Egypt celebrates Eid al-Fitr, a religious holiday marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. Also, the Interior Ministry explained that a new plan was set to deal with traffic congestion as it deployed qualified recruits to work in the traffic departments of Cairo, Giza and Alexandria.
In north Sinai, the Egyptian Army and police continued their anti-terror operations, mainly against ISIS members. Undersecretary of the Health Ministry in northern Sinai Dr. Tareq Kamel said that the ministry requested all hospitals across the province to take a series of emergency measures and ensure that extra medication is available. Late last month, Confederation of African Football President Ahmad Ahmad said a special committee has been set up to deal with security concerns at the Africa Cup of Nations. In May, at least 17 people were injured when an explosion hit a bus carrying mostly South African tourists in Cairo, on the perimeter of the Grand Egyptian Museum. The Nations Cup will feature 24 teams from around the continent to play at venues in Cairo, Alexandria, Ismailia and Suez.

Morocco: Three Pro-ISIS Members Arrested
Casablanca - Lahcen Mokena/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 4 June, 2019/Morocco’s Central Bureau of Judicial Investigations (BCIJ) dismantled on Monday a three-member ISIS cell operating in the cities of Errachidia and Tinghir in the country’s southeast. By this, the total number of detainees in anti-terror operations since the start of 2019 reaches 163. In April alone, 74 individuals, 10 of whom were fighters returning from Syria, were arrested. "The suspects, aged between 26 and 28, were planning to carry out terrorist attacks," said the BCIJ statement. "Initial investigations revealed that the three extremists have adopted ISIS propaganda and tried to recruit and enlist other elements in preparation for their terrorist plots," it added. The suspects were placed in custody for further investigation. Since the beginning of 2019, the Moroccan security forces have dismantled terrorist cells across the country as part of anti-terror operations led by BCIJ in cooperation with security agencies.

UN Condemns Excessive Use of Force Against Sudan Demonstrators
New York - Ali Barada/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 4 June, 2019/UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres strongly condemned the violence and “the use of force to disperse the protesters” at a sit-in in Sudan, saying in a statement that he was also alarmed at reports that “security forces have opened fire inside medical facilities”. Guterres reminded the Transitional Military Council of its responsibility for “the safety and security of the citizens of Sudan”, and urged all parties to “act with utmost restraint”, including their responsibility to uphold “the human rights of all citizens, including the right to freedom of assembly and of expression”.”The statement, published by Stephane Dujarric, Spokesperson for Guterres, called for “unimpeded access to deliver essential care” at the sit-in site outside army headquarters in the capital Khartoum, and in hospitals “where the wounded are treated.”Guterres urged the Sudanese authorities to “facilitate an independent investigation into the deaths and to hold those responsible accountable”. He also called on the Sudanese parties “to pursue peaceful dialogue and to stay the course in the negotiations over the transfer of power to a civilian-led transitional authority, as required by the African Union (AU)”, emphasizing his commitment to working with the AU in support of the process, saying that the UN “stands ready to support the Sudanese stakeholders in their efforts to build lasting peace”. In a separate statement also released by Dujarric, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet called the peaceful demonstrations in Sudan “an inspiration” as the protesters worked “to engage with the Transitional Military Council”. “I utterly deplore the apparent use of excessive force in the protest camps” she said. Bachelet noted that reports stating that live ammunition was used by security forces next to, and even inside, medical facilities are “extremely alarming”. “I urge the security forces to immediately halt such attacks, and to ensure safe, unimpeded access to medical care for all”, she added.

Sudan Opposition Rejects Military Council’s Call for Early Polls
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 4 June, 2019/Sudan's opposition rejected Tuesday a plan by military authorities to hold elections within nine months, a prominent opposition figure said, after the country's worst day of violence since ex-president Omar al-Bashir was ousted in April. Protest organizers say 35 people died in the carnage Monday. "We reject all that was stated in [Transitional Military Council Head Abdel Fattah] al-Burhan's statement," said Madani Abbas Madani, a leading figure in the Declaration of Freedom and Change Forces opposition alliance. The Council said earlier on Tuesday it was canceling all agreements with the main opposition coalition and called for elections within nine months. The two sides had been negotiating over who would run the country after Bashir's ouster in April. After the Council’s announcement, Madani said an open-ended civil disobedience campaign would continue to force the military council from power. Streets in the Sudanese capital were empty on Tuesday, a day after a pro-democracy sit-in was violently overrun by the country's ruling military authorities, who say they want to stage early elections. Mohammed Yousef al-Mustafa, a spokesman for the Sudanese Professionals' Association, which has spearheaded the protests, said: "We are rejecting what Burhan said. Now, they have proved that they are a military coup." He called for the international community and the UN Security Council not to recognize Burhan or the military authorities and put pressure on the generals to hand over power to a civilian-led authority. "We have no choice but to continue our protests and civil disobedience until the fall of the military council," he added. The UN Security Council is set to discuss the crackdown in Sudan on Tuesday afternoon in a closed-door session requested by the United Kingdom and Germany. Burhan has said military leaders would investigate Monday's violence. He didn't mention security forces, but said protests leaders bore blame for the volatile situation because they have been "extending the negotiations and seeking to exclude other political and security forces" from participating in any transitional government, accusations rejected by al-Mustafa.

Statement by Foreign Affairs Minister on 30th anniversary of Tiananmen Square
June 4, 2019 - Ottawa, Ontario - Global Affairs Canada
The Honourable Chrystia Freeland, Minister of Foreign Affairs, today issued the following statement:
“Today, Canadians join others around the world in commemorating the 30th anniversary of the violent crackdown against unarmed and peaceful citizens in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.
“Canada asks Chinese authorities to break the silence on these events by openly accounting for the Chinese citizens who were killed, detained or went missing.
“Under the Chinese constitution, Chinese citizens should enjoy freedom of speech, assembly, association and belief. Canada supports these fundamental human rights and stands with all those prevented from exercising their rights.
Thirty years later, the struggle for basic freedoms continues for human rights defenders in China, including lawyers and journalists. We call upon China to uphold all of its human rights obligations and for the release of those who have been unjustly and arbitrarily detained.”

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on June 04-05/2019
Syria: Iran is not leaving, despite U.S. and Israeli pressure
Seth J. Frantzman/Jerusalem Post/June 04/2019
The report seeks to downplay rumors that an upcoming US, Israel and Russia trilateral meeting in Israel would examine Iran’s presence in Syria.
A Syrian official told Russian media that there are no plans for Iran to reduce its troop levels in the country, even if the US and Israel seek to offer Russia a deal.
Speaking to Izvestia and later reported in Russia’s TASS news agency, the report seeks to downplay rumors that an upcoming US, Israel and Russia trilateral meeting in Israel would examine Iran’s presence in Syria.
Last week, the US and Israel said there would be a trilateral meeting with Russia this month. Reports emerged that there were discussions about a possible Trump administration suggestion that the US could accept the Assad regime in exchange for reduction of Iranian forces and influence in Syria.
Asharq Al-Awsat reported the rumors Monday, but a US official told The National in Abu Dhabi that Washington flatly denied the report.
The US officially opposes the Bashar Assad regime and US President Donald Trump has launched airstrikes against the regime and harshly criticized it for human rights violations, including recent bombing in Idlib.
Trump has also accused Iran of attacking Idlib via its forces in Syria. US-Iran tensions rose this month as the US also accused Tehran of threats in the Gulf and in Iraq.
Israel has called on Iranian forces to leave Syria and recent airstrikes in Syria, two of which Israeli Defense Forces released information about, have occurred over the last week since May 27.
Syria claimed that Israel struck its T-4 airbase where Iranians are suspected to be present.
Syria’s chairman of the Syrian Parliamentary Committee told Izvestia in Russia that “Damascus has no intention of turning away Iran’s military assistance or demanding an Iranian troop withdrawal.”
The Russian report notes that “Washington and Tel Aviv intended to offer a deal to Moscow and Damascus.” The deal would legitimize Assad and remove sanctions as long as the Iranian presence was reduced.
Vitaly Naumkin, director of the Institute of Oriental Studies at the Russian Academy of Science also threw cold water on the news. Russia will not harm relations with Iran for the “sake of a doubtful deal with the Americans,” TASS reported.
In addition, Syria says that it will not bargain regarding Iran’s presence. The US sanctions are a violation of Syria’s rights.
“Washington is not in a position to tell a sovereign state whose troops it may or may not host,” the lawmaker pointed out, according to TASS. “The Iranian troops are deployed to our country based on our government’s official request and will leave Syria when it is necessary.”
But Syria is willing to have talks with Western countries. Although the report did not mention this, Syria wants massive investment to rebuild the country after eight years of war and the displacement of 11 million people. Turkey occupies northern Syria and a US-led coalition supports the Syrian Democratic Forces, which control eastern Syria.
RUSSIA ALSO wonders if the US and Israel are prepared to make “positive actions” regarding Syria, the report notes. “The recent bombing of Syrian military facilities near Quneitra and an air base near Hama did not happen at the same time by chance, but were part of the same campaign,” an expert told Russian media.
This is a thinly veiled accusation against Jerusalem, but it comes as part of the generally amicable relations between Moscow and Israel. While Russia has critiqued Israeli airstrikes in the past, it has also indicated that foreign forces should leave Syria.
However, Moscow’s stance is often cloaked in opacity. Russia said it would supply the Syrian regime with the S-400 last September after Syrian air defenses downed a Russian place during an Israeli airstrike near Latakia.
There are other issues involved as well. Radio Farda reported over the weekend that Russia was not willing to sell Iran the S-400 air defense system.
It is already selling it to Turkey and has shopped it around the Middle East. Russia has also denied reports of a deal with the US regarding Venezuela and a withdrawal of Russians from the South American nation.
These reports should be read as brinkmanship designed to elicit a response from either Moscow or Washington, to test the waters of what might happen on all these files that Moscow and Washington are dealing with. Israel’s media has mistakenly reported in the past that Moscow would ask Iran or Hezbollah to leave Syria and reports have surfaced of Russian guarantees to Israel about keeping Iran away from the Golan ceasefire lines.
Since 2016, reports have also emerged of tensions between Russia and Iran in Syria, including tensions on the ground between different parts of the Syrian army and paramilitary forces that the countries work with. The full details of all these reports never clearly emerge and Moscow, Tehran and Damascus prefer it that way.
On Tuesday, Syria’s regime media SANA reported that it is working on a friendly agreement with Iran. The Syrian soccer team will soon play the Iranians.
At the same time, SANA says that Syria and Russia “affirmed their intention to develop cooperation in various fields,” in a meeting between Syrian Presidential Affairs Minister Mansour Azzam and Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov.
If those two reports are an indication of the relative interests of Damascus, it is that Damascus realizes Russia is the more important ally. Iran is more important for people-to-people relations on the ground.

Opinion/Jared Kushner Just Killed the Palestinian Peace Camp
محمد شحادة/الهآرتس: جارد كوشنر قتل المعسكر الفلسطيني السلمي
Muhammad Shehada/Haaretz/June 04/2019
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/75469/%d9%85%d8%ad%d9%85%d8%af-%d8%b4%d8%ad%d8%a7%d8%af%d8%a9-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%87%d8%a2%d8%b1%d8%aa%d8%b3-%d8%ac%d8%a7%d8%b1%d9%8a%d8%af-%d9%83%d9%88%d8%b4%d9%86%d8%b1%d8%8c-%d8%b5%d9%87%d8%b1-%d8%aa%d8%b1/
'Incapable' of governing themselves: Kushner's condescending slur betrays the Palestinians who have backed negotiations, and boosted the most violent and extreme voices in Palestine.
The most disturbing aspect of U.S. President Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century,’ developed by multi-millionaire son-in-law Jared Kushner, extends far beyond the self-defeating logic on which it's been built.
Put aside the paradoxical act of defunding and cutting U.S. aid to Palestine, then shedding crocodile tears about how Palestinians desperately need the forthcoming Bahrain crowdfunding 'workshop.'
Or Kushner's condescending slur, coming from a member of one of the most chaotic and failed administrations in recent U.S. history, that Palestinians are unfit to govern themselves.
Or the inherently destabilizing assumption that an independent and prosperous Palestinian economy could ever grow within the tight grip of Israeli occupation.
Or the wishful thinking that Kushner knows ordinary Palestinians' needs and aspirations better than they know themselves, and were it not for the Palestinian Authority, Palestinians would agree to sell their quest for freedom and dignity in return for a mess of pottage. Polls show that 80% of Palestinians reject the Trump peace plan.
The most disturbing aspect of the already-failed deal is its disastrous effect on the overall peace process paradigm. In simple terms: Palestinians are losing faith fast with the foundational idea of peace through negotiations.
The humiliating and extremely biased parameters of the deal – and its methodology of battering Palestinians into submission and defeat – is causing wide and ever-growing disillusionment amongst Palestinians with the peace process itself and the path of negotiations.
Recent polls indicate the prevalence of skepticism and a dramatic decrease in support for the two-state solution. More Palestinians are giving up hope on any prospective settlement to be realized through diplomatic means, especially when Kushner’s deal is becoming the standard expression of this peace paradigm.
Forcing what U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo himself calls an "inexecutable" deal on Palestinians - through bribery, coercion and punitive measures - and framing it as Palestinians’ last chance to get anything, undermines moderate Palestinian voices and amplifies immensely violent rejectionism.
Kushner’s red herring proposal pulls the rug from under Palestinian leaders who, for decades, have remained steadfast and faithful to the two-state idea at great personal and political risk. The peace camp is now shamed and silenced for having invested faith in and wasted decades on negotiations that led to Kushner’s deal, while hardliners are now conveniently and gleefully shouting at them: "We told you so!"
Furthermore, Palestinians now see that someone like President Mahmoud Abbas, whose controversial legacy was centered around his obedient fulfillment of Israel and the international community’s demands to police the occupation, and provide unrequited security and stability to Israel at the expense of Palestinians, not only got absolutely nothing out of this, but is now being fought, demonized and drained of resources by the Trump administration.
Add to this how Netanyahu’s ongoing piracy against PA tax revenue, which has paralyzed the PA and compromised its ability to pay its own employees (160,000 civil servants, including 65,000 members of the security forces) – further spreads anti-peace sentiment amongst the salary-dependent, and now impoverished, base of the PA itself.
On the other hand, the abusive and degrading parameters of Kushner’s peace plan, aimed at "finishing off" the irritating obstacle of Palestine are dramatically empowering the most extreme voices in the conflict at the expense of the peace camp.
Most prominent among these is the new Islamic Jihad leader and Iran's loyal man, Ziad Nakhalah, who has found a quick and easy ride upwards, a rising star on the back of the failing status quo and the Kushner deal.
Nakhalah’s pro-war and violent approach mean he is widely detested by Palestinian factions, including Hamas, who disregard him as a stubborn, unstable and politically inexperienced figure dedicated to blow up the status quo.
Nakhalah’s expedient success isn’t dependent on the brilliance of his agenda or rare personal characteristics as much as it’s contingent upon the failure of others. Such as the failure of Hamas to improve Gaza’s living conditions and lift the blockade through ceasefire talks with Israel, or the failure of the PA to realize a fair and practical solution to the conflict through peace talks.
What concerns Hamas the most is that Nakhalah’s ambition is limitless. He’s not competing against Hamas or any other Palestinian factions as much as he’s competing to outshine Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah himself - and become Iran’s No.1 man in the region, no matter what it takes.
Last Friday, after Nakhalah ridiculously claimed that without Iran and its "generous support," Palestinians would have become "slaves to the Israelis" long time ago, he reiterated that his movement is capable of launching more than 1,000 primitive projectiles on Israel every day for months.
The Trump peace plan is now becoming Nakhalah’s best card to play. He feeds on popular despair, disillusionment and disappointment to build towards nihilistic conclusions - that another war is better than the continuity of the unlivable status quo.
Last week, Nakhalah applauded Abbas' remarks that "all those deals [i.e. Kushner’s] will go to hell." He called it a "historic recognition" - that negotiations were always a terrible idea, and a warning to Palestinians never to venture down that path again. Nakhalah emphasized the degrading biases of the Kushner deal to draw bizarre moral inferences about the entire peace camp, as a collective race towards defeat.
The same catastrophic rhetoric that "negotiations led us nowhere, armed resistance is the way" that followed Israel’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza in 2007 is now making a strong comeback, thanks to Kushner’s deal.
Back then, Israel refused to let the PA claim Israel's withdrawal as an achievement of the peace process. That gave Hamas the opportunity to claim that political and diplomatic solutions are futile and will liberate no Palestinian territory, whereas the enemy only understands the language of force. Their star rose exponentially.
It took three devastating wars on Gaza and tens of thousands of casualties to develop an understanding between Netanyahu and Hamas that armed confrontations should be studiously avoided when calm could be bought through frequent improvement measures to the lives of Gaza’s besieged population.
But as that ceasefire paradigm stopped paying off, and thennow facing an indefinite halt as Netanyahu desperately seeks reelection in September, Nakhalah can now declare that the only choice on the table left is anarchic violence.
As the biases of Kushner’s peace plan will continue to sow feelings of defeat, humiliation and isolation amongst Palestinians, Nakhalah’s ascendance to a gruesome kind of stardom is inevitable.
The only way to slow him down, until serious peace talks are on the table again, is to at least revive other options to improving the status quo – most urgently in regard to Gaza’s cease-fire talks and Israel's confiscation of PA tax revenues. But the Trump administration's trajectory is in the opposite direction.
The Kushner plan's core idea is to formalize the defeat of the Palestinians. That will only ensure more recruits flocking to the Palestinian anti-peace camp, which will effectively guarantee the outbreak of more conflict, which will be exploited by the foolish, the desperate, the power-hungry and by outside powers like Iran to become a conflagration. Only a process that improves Palestinian lives without extracting such a complete capitulation can stop this escalation.
The Palestinian peace camp has to hope that the political complications that both Trump and Netanyahu face mean they'll step away from the deal, and that they can keep their camp alive until the scales of the peace process are balanced once again.
*Muhammad Shehada is a writer and civil society activist from the Gaza Strip and a student of Development Studies at Lund University, Sweden. He was the PR officer for the Gaza office of the Euro-Med Monitor for Human Rights. Twitter: @muhammadshehad2

America Needs a New Way of War
Tobin Harshaw/Bloomberg/June 04/2019
“One of the serious problems in planning the fight against American doctrine,” one German officer is said to have said in World War II, “is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine.” Even if that’s apocryphal, it’s accurate. Making things up on the fly is the finest trait of the American national character.
If there is an “American way of war,” it’s very hard to pin down. So this week I talked to a couple of people who have tried. One is Susanna V. Blume, the deputy director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security, who was previously the deputy chief of staff to the Pentagon’s resident futurist, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert O. Work. The other is Christopher M. Dougherty, a senior fellow in the CNAS defense program and former Pentagon defense strategist who helped develop the closest thing to a military doctrine the Pentagon has, the 2016 National Defense Strategy. Their new project is to develop what they call “A New American Way of War.” Here is a lightly edited transcript of our discussion:
Tobin Harshaw: Let’s start with the big picture and then move into specifics. Chris, you’ve popularized this term “New American Way of War.” Can you briefly give the general outline of the theory/doctrine behind it?
Christopher Dougherty: The idea grew out of the analysis and assessment work I did while at the Defense Department, which ended up shaping a lot of last year’s National Defense Strategy. When you look at possible future wars, particularly against great powers, the US is taking a lot of risks. Moreover, these risks are systemic and spread out across different missions and organizations, meaning that the current piecemeal approach to dealing with them won’t work. What’s needed is a fundamental rethinking of how the US armed forces fight.
Susanna Blume: Chris often quotes a line from Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s novel “The Leopard”: “For things to stay the same, everything must change.” The US is fundamentally a status quo power, but in order to ensure that we can maintain (and improve upon) the status quo into the future, we need to substantially rethink the way the US military fights, given the strides our competitors have made in figuring out how to counter our advantages.
TH: Today we break warfare down into five “domains”: air, land, sea, space and information/cyber. The US can no longer expect to maintain dominance in all. But in terms of Russia and China, where is the US most in danger? How, in terms of equipment and manpower, do we need to adapt to regain that dominance?
CD: Information/cyber, followed closely by air and space. The other domains matter, but these are the linchpins. If you read Chinese and Russian military sources and look at their investments, they make clear their intention to attack us in these areas, because they (rightly) believe that this is how they can overcome our advantages and offset their weaknesses. The other part I’d mention is mobility/logistics/sustainment, because it’s so central to our ability to project power overseas.
TH: The report by the commission that reviewed the National Defense Strategy grabbed a lot of headlines by saying the US military “might struggle to win, or perhaps lose, a war against China or Russia.” Recent Pentagon war games have shown this as well. Do you think these assessments are overly alarming, or have things really reached that point?
CD: Those assessments are generally accurate, although it’s very difficult to predict something as complex as a future war with a high degree of confidence - particularly when there is no track record of combat between adversaries using current weapons. Policymakers should be alarmed, but not panicked. These problems are solvable, provided we make some smart decisions.
TH: Susanna last week put out a short post advising Congress on what its 2020 defense budget should look like. Looking at the White House’s proposed budget, what is one big thing the Trump team got right? And what are a couple of important things that need to be addressed?
SB: There is goodness in this budget request. Highlights include the Navy’s substantial investment in unmanned surface and subsurface vehicles and substantial munitions purchases. However, a major shortcoming is that the services remain overly fixated on the size of the force, which results in inadequate attention to what the force is actually capable of doing in a highly contested environment.
TH: Perhaps the most symbolic asset of the old American way of war is the aircraft carrier. But the Navy wants a whole new fleet of massive Ford-class ships at $13 billion a pop. Is that a mistake?
CD: Answering this question requires answering three supporting questions. One, what is the Navy’s future vision for the aircraft carrier? If that vision is like the recent past, in which the carriers have served as platforms for relatively short-range air operations in permissive environments like Iraq or Afghanistan, then it could be a mistake. If, instead, the carrier serves as a long-range, sea-control, strike and anti-submarine asset for the Indian and Pacific Oceans, it could be quite useful.
Two, what is the future of the carrier airwing? The airwing defines the mission capability of the carrier. If the Navy continues to buy short-range strike fighters like the F/A-18 and F-35, the carrier will be less useful. If it procures a more diverse airwing or multiple airwings that can be swapped based on mission demands, that would enable carriers to support the kind of long-range missions needed to confront China and Russia.
Three, what are the opportunity costs? Carriers soak up a lot of resources, but they provide (presently) a lot of capabilities. Absent changes suggested above, trends suggest that the costs will go up as the capabilities against great-power competitors go down. In a world of quiet submarines and hypersonic anti-ship missiles, it may not make sense for the Navy to concentrate so much of its combat power in relatively scarce and expensive assets. The problem is that spreading combat power around — what the Navy calls distributed lethality — generally involves a loss of overall combat power to make the force more resilient to enemy attack. If the Navy can find ways to distribute combat power effectively without significant detriment to its overall combat power, there may be an argument for decreasing the size and salience of the carrier fleet.
TH: When he was deputy secretary of defense – and Susanna’s boss - your CNAS colleague Bob Work was the driving force behind this sort of forward-looking reformation of the military. Did his work on the “third offset,” which centers on using new technology to rebuild America’s advantage, have a lasting effect on the Defense Department? Is there anybody or any team in the Trump Pentagon playing that role?
SB: I do believe that the intellectual capital behind the third offset continues to have an impact on the department. Things like its continued investment in and prioritization of artificial intelligence and autonomy has its roots in the third offset. But I think the biggest impact we will continue to see well into the future is the cadre of mid-career officers and civil servants to whom the third offset gave a clear focus on the future, and on what the Pentagon needs to do to be ready for it.
CD: The thinking and analysis behind the third offset didn’t go away - they’re woven into the fabric of the National Defense Strategy. As far as the people and teams go, there are a host of individuals and organizations that continue looking at the future through this lens. The services are doing some great work with the Futures Command in the Army, the Air Force’s Warfighting Integration Capability, the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, and the Navy’s N3/N5 all being particularly forward-leaning.
TH: There is a strong consensus in the national security community that Russia and especially China are the threats the military needs to be geared toward. But the terrorists aren’t going away; they are only going to multiply. How does the US shift to major-power competition without losing the capabilities to counter non-state entities?
SB: There are different ways to address the threat posed by non-state actors, which come with different resource requirements. One approach is to invade and occupy a country for years on end, attempting to remake it in our image. This approach is very resource-intensive, and often less than successful. Another approach is to focus on those individuals and groups that have the intention and capability to attack the United States, and to degrade their ability to do so. This approach requires money and manpower, but is much less resource-intensive than the former. Sticking to this latter approach, along with some sensible investments in inexpensive platforms designed to operate cost-effectively in permissive environments, will free up resources required to sustain the US military’s technological advantage.
TH: Let’s finish where we started. Given the invested interests in Congress, slowness of the Pentagon to make change (and number of flag officers who try to stop it all together), influence of the big contractors, etc., is there really any hope of moving to a force capable of the New American Way of War?
SB: I remain optimistic. It is true that change in the Pentagon is generally slow, incremental and incomplete. However, we are already seeing progress, which has continued despite the change in administration. The service organizations focused on the future that Chris noted are great examples. On the other hand, if this administration were to invade Iran, for example, it could mean the effective end of the current National Defense Strategy.
CD: I’m cautiously optimistic. There have been some positive shifts already. For example, our deterrent posture in Eastern Europe is much better than it was in 2014. Admittedly a low bar, but still progress. The other thing that gives me hope is that our competitors face many of the same (and some different) structural constraints and obstacles that we do.

May’s Exit Points to a Crisis of Thought and Identity
Eyad Abu Shakra/Asharq Al Awsat/June 04/2019
The British, as well as others, may best remember the image of Prime Minister Theresa May holding back her tears as she was announcing her resignation. This image is her most enduring throughout her three years in office.
Mrs May, who took over as prime minister on July 13th, 2016, becoming the second woman to occupy the post after Margaret Thatcher, has neither had a comfortable nor an impressive tenure.
Some may say that she could not have done other than what she managed to do, because the challenges that defeated her were structural political challenges connected with identity. Thus, they would have defeated any leader as strong and popular as he or she could be. Indeed, those following British politics may also argue those challenges were the ones that defeated and ended the rule of Thatcher, who was the longest serving Conservative Prime Minister since 1902.
Well, let us begin with internal party politics, especially, that was what accelerated the fall of the last Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron and Theresa May, is the fact that they were both chosen to lead their party, and then the government, because they were ‘compromise politicians’ not great leaders. As a matter of fact, any party that suffers ideological or personal schisms, like the Conservative Party, would try to avoid choosing a strong leader with decisive and forthright positions, because such a leader would have as many enemies as ambitions. This is something that undermines any chance to unite the various wings of the party. Indeed, if we go back through history we see that, after the retirement of Winston Churchill, during the mid-1950s, the Conservative Party was rich in strong and ambitious figures. It also had varying policies, whether on internal issues such as the economy and the Irish problem, and foreign such as the Cold war, the relations with the colonies and former colonies, the ‘special relationship’ with the USA, etc.
Among those ambitious figures was (Lord) Richard “Rab” Butler (1902-1982), who occupied almost all top government post except becoming Prime Minister as the Party overlooked him on more than one occasion; he is still nicknamed by the party faithful as ‘The best Prime Minister we never had”.
As for policies and ideological currents, there were always several currents within the party, including extreme right wingers from which emerged figures such as the former MP and cabinet minister Enoch Powell (1912-1998) – who later quit the party. Later on, another group of extreme right wingers rose to prominence like Margaret Thatcher, her ‘mentor’ Sir Keith Joseph, and her ‘disciples’ Michael Portillo, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard.
On the other hand, there were the liberal and moderate currents which believed in social unity – or ‘One-nation Toryism’ – led by figures like former MPs and cabinet Ministers Sir Ian McLeod (1913-1970) and Reginald Maudling, and former Prime Minister Edward Heath; and recently, among the most prominent ‘rebels’ against the party’s drift further to the Right are former Prime Minister John Major and former deputy Prime Minister (Lord) Michael Heseltine.
Europe has been a long-disputed issue among Conservatives, as was how to deal with the Irish problem, the independence of colonies and the relations with the Commonwealth.
Edward Heath was an advocate of closer ties with Europe, as are the moderate wing within the party. Opposed to him was Thatcher, his bitter enemy, who took pride in opposing any European strong ties, let alone integration. Her younger extreme rightist ‘disciples’ have gone one step further, by expressing their support of quitting the European Union altogether; and thus, strongly voted ‘Leave’ in the 2016 ‘Brexit’ referendum.
Here one might argue that a sizeable percentage of the moderate wing’s support for stronger ties with Europe stems from pragmatic and realistic thinking. The UK, is no more capable of moving around freely within the traditional ‘three circles’ it used to benefit from, namely: the Commonwealth, the ‘special relationship’ with the USA, and Europe.
The Commonwealth has now been radically transformed and its interest-based links have all but disappeared. As for the relationship with the USA, it is no more exclusive or even preferential, as other major countries like Germany and Japan today enjoys solid ties with Washington; and are expected to grow even stronger in the face of the growing challenge from Russia and China. Thus, Europe remains the closest neighbor geographically, historically, and perhaps economically too. Directly opposed to this thinking is the ideological extremism – if not condescending isolationism – that is driving the ‘Leavers’ to exit Europe. In fact, from the extreme right wing of the Conservative Party came the leaders of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), whose rising popularity pushed a panicky David Cameron to promise a referendum that ended his political career without ensuring the unity of his party. Soon afterwards, from the same extremist Conservative wing came the leaders of the new more successful Brexit Party, which dwarfed the Conservatives in the European Elections.
The 2016 historic referendum, which was won by ‘Leavers’, surprised Cameron – a ‘Remainer’ – and ended his political career. Subsequently, in an attempt to maintain the fragile unity of the party, Theresa May, another ‘Remainer’ was picked to succeed him. To satisfy the ‘Leavers’ she committed her government to abide by the referendum result; however, her attempts to secure a smooth exit were doomed to failure as they were opposed by her party’s extremists and the EU negotiators. Finally, this lengthy losing battle forced her to resign.
Today there is a political war raging within the Conservative Party between the extremist ‘Leavers’; while the moderates are trying to bend the wind of populism and violent isolationism, currently blowing all over the world.
The extremists are still stubbornly claiming that the UK would be better off outside Europe, where it would be unburdened by the ‘EU’s restrictions’ as it seeks alternative trading partners. However, they seem to be oblivious to the dangers leaving the EU could bring, as Scotland and Northern Ireland – both of which voted ‘Remain’ – may start looking for excuses to go their own way.
Given such a situation, strident populism seems to be weakening the moderates, many of whom are losing hope of maintaining the unity in a party whose ideological division has become deeper and wider than the abilities of any leader.

The Books He Loved but Others Shouldn't Read
Amir Taheri/Asharq Al Awsat/June 04/2019
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14325/ayatollah-khamenei-books
The new book, a sort of biography, was originally written in Arabic under the title "En Ma'a al-sabr fathan" ("Patience Leads to Victory") but has just come out in Persian translation under a pseudo-poetical title, "The Drop of Blood That Became a Ruby". The "Supreme Guide," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, recalls his "passion for reading famous Iranian and world novels" and insists on "the deep impact" that reading novels had on him.
Top of Khamenei's list are 10 of the cloak-and-dagger novels written by Michel Zevaco, the Corsican-French writer who helped popularize what the English call "penny-dreadful" romances in France.... Zevaco's world is a universe of sex, violence, conspiracy and betrayal. In Zevaco's best-selling novel "Borgia," the head of the dreadful Borgia family that dominated Florentine politics in the medieval times, rapes his own sister Lucrece, a seductive blonde. The novel "Nostradamus" is a fictionalized biography of a roaming charlatan who claimed to read the future to gain money, power, sex and fame.
Khamenei says he loved and cherished all those books. Ironically, however, all the novels he devoured with great appetite are on a blacklist of books that "corrupt public morality and violate religious values", established under President Muhammad Khatami in 1999. Iranians who are today the same age as Khamenei was in his youth cannot read the books he loved.
In a new biography, the Islamic Republic of Iran's "Supreme Guide," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, recalls his "passion for reading famous Iranian and world novels" and insists on "the deep impact" that reading novels had on him. Ironically, all the novels he devoured with great appetite are on Iran's blacklist of books that "corrupt public morality and violate religious values." Iranians who are today the same age as Khamenei was in his youth cannot read the books he loved.
"Tell me which books you read, and I'll tell you who you are!" That was how the late Iranian literary critic Mohit Tabatabai used to tease Tehran's glitterati in the "good old days." To be sure, the claim wasn't based on any scientific study but empirical evidence showed that it wasn't quite off the mark either. Books do offer an insight into the soul of a reader, provided he has a soul.
Thus, those interested in all things Iranian, especially in these exciting times, wouldn't want to miss a new book on the Islamic Republic's "Supreme Guide" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, if only because it devotes a chapter to books that he loved as a young man.
The new book, a sort of biography, was originally written in Arabic under the title "En Ma'a al-sabr fathan" ("Patience Leads to Victory") but has just come out in Persian translation under a pseudo-poetical title, "The Drop of Blood That Became a Ruby". The "Supreme Guide" recalls his "passion for reading famous Iranian and world novels" and insists on "the deep impact" that reading novels had on him.
But what novels did the future "Supreme Guide" found especially captivating?
Top of Khamenei's list are 10 of the cloak-and-dagger novels written by Michel Zevaco, the Corsican-French writer who helped popularize what the English call "penny-dreadful" romances in France. Zevaco uses a simple formula: taking a historic character or event and fictionalizing it with a dose of page-turning pathos. Zevaco's world is a universe of sex, violence, conspiracy and betrayal. In Zevaco's best-selling novel "Borgia," the head of the dreadful Borgia family that dominated Florentine politics in the medieval times, rapes his own sister Lucrece, a seductive blonde. The novel "Nostradamus" is a fictionalized biography of a roaming charlatan who claimed to read the future to gain money, power, sex and fame.
Zevaco's most popular novels come in the series known as "Les Paradaillans" of which only two are translated into Persian.
Zevaco was an anarchist who edited the movement's organ "Les Gueux" (The Beggars) and aims at highlighting the corruption of European ruling classes. Ferociously anti-clerical, Zevaco regards organized religion as "the poison of the masses". Some of his best writing is about the massacre of Huguenots (Protestant Christians) by the French King Charles IX under the influence of his shrewish mother Catherine de Medici.
Khamenei's next favourite novelist is Alexandre Dumas, another spinner of 19th century swashbuckling yarns including the "Three Musketeers", "The Count of Montecristo", "Twenty Years Later" and, the gripping "Cagliostro," relating the adventures of Joseph Balsamo, another charlatan in search of sex, money and power. Duma's work has less sex, revenge and violence than Zevaco but the two French authors share many similarities, especially when it comes to fast-paced adventures and unexpected reversals of fortune.
Another 19th century French novelist is Maurice Leblanc, best known for his "Arsene Lupin" series about a gentleman thief who robs gentlemen -- a classic of escapist literature.
Leblanc's work shares two features with the works of Zevaco and Dumas. The first is the creation of an alternative world as a fictionalized double for the real one. The second is the central hero's disdain for codes and norms of established bourgeois morality.
Khamenei says that he also read "almost all Iranian novels" of the period.
At the time of Khamenei's youth, Persian novels seldom went beyond imitations of French novels of the late 19th century with Joris-Karl Huysmans, Emile Zola, Hector Malot and Anatole France as favourites. Because Iranian intellectuals disliked the British, none bothered to translate major English novels until the 1950s and, in the case of American literature, until a decade later. For the average Iranian reader, young men like Khamenei, France was the world's "Literary Superpower." Russian literature was also little known, again partly because of Iranian elite's dislike of Russia as an enemy of Persia for two centuries.
Curiously all the Iranian novelists of the time Khamenei talks about chose women as central characters at a time that Iranian women were still treated as second class citizens.
Ali Dashti's novel offers a heroin named "Fitneh" (Sedition) who decides to use her charms to move up the ladder in a world dominated by men.
Muhammad Hejazi's heroin "Ziba" is equally charming and ruthless in pursuit of a place in a world that tries to shut women out.
Then we have "Shahrashub" (literally: the disturber of peace in the city) the heroine of Hossein-Qoli Mosta'an whose appetite for sex is as keen as that of the main male character Aqa-Bala Khan. Another popular novel by Mosta'an, "Rabi'a," also has a woman as central character but is set in medieval times.
Jawad Fadil's "Yeganeh" is in a different register, a romantic tear-jerker about star-crossed lovers. But even there, it is the heroin "Yeganeh" (The Unique One) who captains the wayward ship of a forlorn love. Fadil's second novel, "Sho'eleh" (The Flame), also has a woman as its central character but is more ambitious in literary terms.
Taghi Modaressi's heroin "Yakolia" in the novel of the same title is the most literary of the works of that period with the added distinction of being set in Biblical times.
In Rahmat Mostafavi's "Socalites" a group of strong and independent-minded women try to carve a niche for themselves in a paternalistic society obsessed with "Islamic values". Even Muhammad Masud's thriller, "Awesome Tehran," (Tehran e Makhouf) features a number of atypical Iranian women who could, when necessary, be as ruthless and as cunning as the men who tried to dominate them.
The best-selling novel of the latter-end of that period was Muhammad-Ali Afghani's "Ahu Khanum's Husband" which launched a nationwide debate on the status of women and was used as material for a feature film and a television series.
It is difficult to know what Khamenei thought of those women. Zevaco's heroines, notably Lucretia, may have frightened him with their lust for debauchery. But, I guess, he may have found Forugh, Aqa Bala-Khan's wife, who courageously fights for her dignity, might have frightened the future " Supreme Guide" even more.
Khamenei says he loved and cherished all those books. Ironically, however, all the novels he devoured with great appetite are on a blacklist of books that "corrupt public morality and violate religious values", established under President Muhammad Khatami in 1999. Iranians who are today the same age as Khamenei was in his youth cannot read the books he loved.
*Amir Taheri, formerly executive editor-in-chief of Iran's premier newspaper, Kayhan, before the Iranian revolution of 1979, is a prominent author based on Europe. He is the Chairman of Gatestone Europe.
© 2019 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

June 4: China's Longest Night
Gordon G. Chang/Gatestone Institute/June 04/2019
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14333/tiananmen-square-anniversary
The Chinese state has become a dangerous actor. It has, among other things, been dismembering neighbors, closing off the global commons, systematically violating international rules, supporting rogue regimes, proliferating weapons technologies, attacking democracy. Any attempt to stop such conduct is met with Beijing angrily claiming a violation of its sovereignty.
The Chinese Communist Party has resorted to intimidation and coercion to keep people in line. The world's most sophisticated surveillance state is adept at oppression, especially as it adopts and perfects mechanisms of control. For instance, within months it plans to amalgamate local "social credit systems" into a national one, to give every Chinese person a constantly updated score based upon factors such as political obedience. Xi Jinping, the Communist Party's general secretary, is creating what the Economist termed "the world's first digital totalitarian state."
The hope that China can liberalize itself starts with the Chinese people. And the conversation about liberalization begins, as a practical matter, in the only place on Chinese soil where Tiananmen is publicly discussed and mourned, where that coercion is least felt. That place is Hong Kong....
There was a semblance of liberty in the months before Tiananmen... But on June 3 and June 4, [Deng Xiaoping] made it clear the Communist Party would stop at nothing.
During the night of June 3-4, 1989, the People's Liberation Army viciously cleared Beijing's Tiananmen Square, where more than a million people had gathered, talked, sung, and celebrated. During the night thousands died. Blood marked pavements, corpses littered streets and alleys. Pictured: A military parade in Tiananmen Square on September 3, 2015. (Photo by Jason Lee - Pool/Getty Images)
As June 3 passed into June 4 in Beijing in 1989, enraged citizens defended streets and neighborhoods as soldiers and armored vehicles of the murderous 27th Army, along with the 38th, moved from the western approaches of the Chinese capital to the heart of the city. It was China's longest night.
By the morning of the 4th, the self-styled army of the Chinese people, the People's Liberation Army, had viciously cleared Tiananmen Square, where more than a million people had gathered, talked, sung, and celebrated since the middle of April. The papier-mâché Goddess of Democracy, a monument to freedom that dominated the square, was smashed.
During the night thousands died. Blood marked pavements, corpses littered streets and alleys. Protests in the Chinese capital and about 370 other cities were put down. The ensuing political crackdown lasted years, and there was an immediate end to efforts to liberalize the economy.
For many, it was the end of hope. Dissidents surreptitiously fled China for Hong Kong and points beyond. Not all were so fortunate as to make it out of the country.
Deng Xiaoping, paramount leader of the time, wanted to make a point: the Communist Party was prepared to kill in great numbers to keep power.
His three successors have taken a different approach. They released a low — 241 — official death toll. Most estimates put the dead in the thousands. Moreover, officials avoid mentioning the event that had almost turned into an uprising. Chinese high school students have been given only one line in a textbook.
As a result, many grew up in China not hearing of "that 1989 affair" as officials have called it. "The only thing I can remember about June 4 is watching television and hearing that riot police had died," Lu Jing, a high school student in 1999 told AFP. "I don't believe any students died. China in this respect is democratic as China wouldn't hurt its own people."
To maintain rule in the face of such a horrific event, Chinese leaders have whitewashed the Beijing Spring and diverted the attention of the Chinese people by, among other things, promoting "Han nationalism," a racist, xenophobic ideology. Due in part to its victim narrative — Beijing says it is now entitled to right wrongs from the 19th century — the Chinese state has become a dangerous actor. It has, among other things, been dismembering neighbors, closing off the global commons, systematically violating international rules, supporting rogue regimes, proliferating weapons technologies, attacking democracy.
Any attempt to stop such conduct is met with Beijing angrily claiming a violation of its sovereignty. For instance, in response to American tariffs imposed as a remedy for the annual theft of hundreds of billions of dollars of intellectual property, the Communist Party in the middle of last month declared a "people's war" against the United States, effectively branding Washington an enemy of China.
Beijing these days is increasingly turning disputes into national and international crises, a symptom of an insecure ruling group. At the heart of that insecurity is the Communist Party's continual need to justify dictatorial rule to an increasingly sophisticated populace. The wound of Tiananmen makes its leaders even less sure of themselves.
China's despots should be concerned as they have clearly lost hearts and minds, something evident even among those living close to their leadership compound in the center of the Chinese capital. The Party rolls out one "patriotic" campaign after another, but people in Beijing and elsewhere have tuned them out. The authorities can ban Peppa Pig, for instance, as they did last year because the adorable cartoon character became a slacker and "gangsta" symbol, but the Chinese people happily ignored the prohibition and officials had to relent, rehabilitating her this year.
In this situation, the Party has resorted to intimidation and coercion to keep people in line. The world's most sophisticated surveillance state is adept at oppression, especially as it adopts and perfects mechanisms of control. For instance, within months it plans to amalgamate local "social credit systems" into a national one, to give every Chinese person a constantly updated score based upon factors such as political obedience. Xi Jinping, the Communist Party's general secretary, is creating what the Economist termed "the world's first digital totalitarian state."
Xi, with his social credit scoring and other mechanisms, has been attempting to reverse the trend toward openness, and this has accompanied his effort to return the economy to a state-dominated model. Both initiatives are an all-out assault on modernity.
For decades — the Party celebrates 70 years of rule on October 1 — Mao and his successors have kept themselves ensconced, but as Arthur Waldron of the University of Pennsylvania recently wrote, "These guys are placeholders."Yes, they are merely temporary. They rule because they coerce, not because they lead.
The hope that China can liberalize itself starts with the Chinese people. And the conversation about liberalization begins, as a practical matter, in the only place on Chinese soil where Tiananmen is publicly discussed and mourned, where that coercion is least felt. That place is Hong Kong, where tens of thousands gather each anniversary in a park to mark the event with candlelight.
That must be galling to General Secretary Xi, and he is taking steps to rein in Hong Kong and end the annual vigils. To bring Hong Kong to heel, he has forced Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam to push what is called the "extradition bill," amendments to the Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminals Matters Ordinances.
If China can "extradite" Tiananmen dissidents and others, there will be no more Tiananmen vigils, and Hong Kong will no longer be a refuge. It is in Hong Kong — and only Hong Kong — where there is some semblance of liberty in the People's Republic of China.
There was a semblance of liberty in the months before Tiananmen, and many saw Deng's refusal to accept change as the final stand of communism in China. But on June 3 and June 4, he made it clear the Communist Party would stop at nothing.
China's longest night, unfortunately, continues.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China and a Gatestone Institute Distinguished Senior Fellow.
© 2019 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

A Syrian in Jerusalem
Finally face to face, after growing up learning about the other
Ahmad Danny Ramadan/Tablet/June 04/2019
Tel Aviv Airport, Saturday, May 11, 2019—“What is your origin?” the Israeli custom officer asks while examining me closely. My Canadian passport, still briskly new, states that information clearly, but he didn’t bother reading it.
“I was born in Damascus, Syria,” I respond, calmly. He pauses, as if he can’t hear me. He looks up and asks me to repeat myself.
“I was born in Damascus, Syria.”
The customs officer apologizes, insisting that he didn’t hear me well. He peers at me through the window.
“I was born in Damascus. Syria.” I say again, this time loudly, and silence falls behind me and my fiancé, Matthew. The other passengers must be cursing their luck; they picked the wrong line.
The officer takes away my passport and asks me to head to the security waiting room.
It’s 1998 and winter is cold in Damascus. My fingers are freezing even though I’m wearing the red wool gloves my father bought me last week. I wanted the pink gloves, but he instructed me that pink is a girls’ color and presented me with blue ones instead—dark like the skies of Damascus after a snowstorm. We finally settled on the red gloves as a neutral, genderless color.
The road to school is downhill. I walk it every day with my friend Iyad. We hold hands sometimes when we cross busy streets; it’s a habit we learned in our childhood that we will forget as we grow older, but for today, we are holding hands. He is wearing dark blue wool gloves.
We discuss the nationalism class we had yesterday. The teacher, an older woman we nicknamed Mrs. Storms due to her mood swings, insisted that the Zionist enemy occupying Palestine must be eradicated. “The only way to defeat them is to believe in Hafez al-Assad, our forever leader, who continues his stand against the Zionist enemy since he was elected in the 1970s.”
We believe Mrs. Storms, especially as she talks about the glorious events that led to Syria winning the October 1973 war against Israel. Iyad tells me that we should always fear the Zionist enemy because they’re monsters. “They kidnap Palestinian children and lock them in barrels,” he explains. I am distracted, looking deeply in his brown eyes and wishing that I could kiss him. “They drain them of their blood and make blood pies they eat on Saturdays.” I jolt out of my fantasy, scared. I squeeze his hand tighter.
That night, instead of the usual wet dreams about Iyad, I have a nightmare in which monsters with sharp teeth are forcing me down a barrel and draining my blood for pies.
Jerusalem, Sunday, May 12—“You’re avoiding the question,” the journalist sitting across from me says. He is covered in sweat; the weather in Jerusalem knows no mercy. He asks me for the third time to state my political view on the current Israeli affairs.
“I am quite critical of the State of Israel, and its violations of human rights specifically when it comes to Palestinians and illegal migrants,” I repeat, “but I’m not riding a much higher horse when I’m coming from Syria, with its own regime’s violations of human rights against its own people.”
He was still unpleased. “This is a polite answer,” he states, disappointed.
“This is the answer I have for you,” I insist. “I’m a writer here—coming to talk about my book, not the Israeli-Syrian tension.”
“You’re the first Syrian person that I interviewed in my life; you owe me answers about Syria,” he asserts. Sweat is building on my own forehead now. This interview started as a fluff piece about my writing and turned into 60 Minutes.
“How can you still love Syria after all it did to you? How can you not just admit that Israel is better?” he asks, making sure his recording device is still working.
I’m genuinely unsure how to answer this question. I believe in the complex narrative of our geographical location, and I believe in the complex experience of my life. Syria is an insane mother; she gave me birth and nurtured me, and she abused me as a child and slammed the door in my face. The package of love and hate I have for her is mixed within me. The complexity of my relationship to this mother taught me one thing: Things are never black-and-white; everything is a shade of gray. The worst thing we can do is simplify our hate for one another, I truly believe that—it makes it easier for us to forget how complex the human experience is not just for others, but also for ourselves.
Yet simply enough, I hate this journalist. I look at him in disdain and I decide to answer all of his future questions with yes or no answers.
It’s 2005 and it’s hot in Dahab, a little town on the beaches of the Red Sea. My boyfriend at the time, an Italian man with brown hair and skin that glows under the sun, introduces me to his Israeli friend visiting for the weekend. We spend the evening smoking joints and drinking wine while chatting about the world and I realize, for the first time in my life, that Syria did not win the October 1973 war. My friends—most of them are American or European—make fun of me and I explain that I grew up with that being taught in schools as a historical fact. Everyone goes to bed, and I spend the night researching the historical events of the tension between Syria and Israel and I realize that al-Assad used the narrative of “The Zionist Enemy” to create a boogeyman for the Syrian people, to convince us that he was the only one who could protect us from that monster. I connect the dots and realize that Iyad was only recounting a scene from The Mummy when he told me the story of the blood pies. That is the day I learn about the anti-Jewish riots in Syria. Mrs. Storms never taught us anything about that.
Jerusalem, Thursday, May 16—“I remember crying my eyes out when I found out that it is a boy,” a woman in the little bar we’re at with my fiancé says to me. I can tell that she has tears in her eyes as she speaks. She downs the remaining red wine in her glass and smiles at me. Behind her face I see emotions that I couldn’t understand. She already told me of her joy that she finally got pregnant after trying for months, she told me of the many trials her and her husband went through for that pregnancy to be successful.
“You cried of happiness, I assume?” I question. I can picture her in her hospital bed when the doctors revealed to her that her child is a boy. Both of the parents decided not to know the gender of the child until the delivery day. She sniffles and looks around the two of us, the lights dimming, and the breeze engulfing us with a chill. “No,” she states. “I cried because I knew he will end up going to the army as a fighter.”
She looks around her again. “The Israeli Defense Forces are creating monsters of our children,” she whispers. “The propaganda is intense, and I don’t know. We don’t know if we can raise our child strongly enough to educate him on the world around him. We don’t know if we can prepare for the years he will spend in the army, carrying weapons and wielding power in the face of the other.”
She looks around her one more time. The lights at the bar are at the dimmest they could be. Somehow, I feel like the two of us are finally alone in the bar. “We grew up learning about the other,” she continues, “the Arabs who want to kill us and eradicate us and push us to the sea. It took us years to come up with our own truths, and I’m scared.”
And then she adds with a sigh: “I’m scared he will hate you even before he knows you.”
It’s 1947 and I am not yet born. Syria has gained independence from the French less than a year ago, and nationalist voices are taking hold. The country is drawn on the map like a misshapen triangle. The last time Syria was independently ruled was in the seventh century, before the Islamic armies coming from the Persian Gulf colonized this land we now call Syria. This new concept of what it means to be Syrian is growing, and the United Nations voting in favor of partitioning Palestine leads to persecution of the Jewish minority in Syria. Anti-Jewish riots in Aleppo and Damascus erupt. Suddenly a minority that has been part of these communities for 2,000 years becomes the enemy. Seventy-five people are murdered, Jewish houses and businesses set ablaze. In 1947, 10,000 Jewish people live in Aleppo. By 2012, not a single Jewish person lived in the whole country of Syria.
It’s 2015 and it is raining in Vancouver. It seeps into my clothes and my bones no matter how many layers I put on. My feet are always freezing and wet. I open my email to finally receive the results of my 23andMe test. I scan the percentages. I knew most of these things: I have Assyrian blood in me, carried in my genes since 600 BCE, I’m 25% Kurdish from my mother’s side, and I have some Italian blood that my family tree can’t explain. Right there, I knew that I’ve always belonged to that part of the world, and I started to realize that the Arabs were colonizers themselves, bringing the Islamic religion, the Arabic language and erasing the Assyrian identity over hundreds of years. I feel pride in my history as an Assyrian, a history I never learned about in high school. Two years later I will be in Paris, visiting the Louvre, and I will find myself in a special exhibit of Assyrian heritage. My boyfriend will take a picture of me next to one of the Assyrian statues and he will say that the statue and I share the same eye bridge and nose. I won’t let him see, but I will be so moved, I will cry.
It’s 2019 and the curtains are closed. I don’t know what the weather is like outside, but it changes six different ways throughout the day in Vancouver’s spring season. I announce on Facebook that I will be visiting Israel for the International Writers Festival in Jerusalem and I immediately start receiving comments from friends. Most are celebratory, but a couple of them voice disappointment. The tension between Syria and Israel jumped to new levels when President Donald Trump tweeted his intention earlier in March to recognize Israeli control over the Golan Heights, a territory that Israel wrestled from Syria in the Six-Day War in 1967. Others accuse Israel of so-called pinkwashing, or vocally supporting the LGBTQ+ community to wash away alleged state human rights violations against Palestinians. One person I admire texts asking me, as a fellow artist, to boycott Israel.
When I received the invitation to visit Israel over a year ago, I thought about all of these accusations. Before that, when my Israeli publisher asked me if I would be interested in publishing a Hebrew translation of The Clothesline Swing, I asked myself these same questions, too. I decided back then, as I’m deciding now, that the history of tension between Arabs and Israelis is more complicated than today’s headlines or yesterday’s wars. Our history is a complex story with multiple viewpoints, and multiple narratives. Each side continues to write their own narrative, winning wars on history papers and creating enemies of other people we never met. My relationship as a Syrian with Israel is narrated through propaganda and media headlines. I’ve never met someone like me visiting a place like this. I’m running this course without any guidelines other than my values.
I do not want to be part of the herd mentality of rejecting the other. I want to be able to see the more complex—albeit incomplete—picture of what it truly means to carry all of these identities, and to hold such privileges, while visiting such a complex place.
Here is the thing: The simple act of me flying with my fiancé to Israel for a week is more complicated than just how simplified all of these narratives are. It’s larger than all of these little and large stories I share, it’s the sum of all of these parts. It’s also an experience that I’m the first person to ever go through—to my knowledge, at least—as the first Syrian Canadian author to visit Israel and one of the few Damascus-born people to ever have the opportunity to visit modern Jerusalem.
Tel Aviv, Sunday, May 19—I reach my hand over a man’s head. “Excuse my reach,” I say in English, trying to fetch a book on the shelf over his seat in a bookshop café.
He doesn’t acknowledge me.
I repeat the same thing in Arabic, and check to see if he is wearing headphones. I don’t want to reach over his head without permission. He still is gazing, almost aimlessly, at his laptop screen. I can tell he is not acknowledging my presence. “Which book do you want?” the bookshop owner, an Arab Israeli sitting in the corner, stands up and grabs the book I’m pointing at. He asks the man sitting down in Arabic to move a bit, and the man moves smiling. The man then turns to me and gives me a dirty look. I think about asking him why he is antagonistic toward me. I think better of it, and walk back to my table, and hand the book—an English translation of Azazeel by Yousef Zaydan—to my partner. I wanted my fiancé to read a book I read when I was much younger, in Arabic.
I sit down, glancing at the man every now and then, meeting his accusing eyes.
“We heard about your visit,” the bookshop owner says to me as I pay for the 13 books—12 of which are in Arabic—and for our tea. “We read about you in the newspaper.” He glances with me toward the man in the corner. I smile and we exchange some pleasant chitchat about how expensive it is for me to cargo books in Arabic from the Middle East to Canada, and how meaningful it is for me to browse a bookstore with Arabic books.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” the man under the shelf says, under his breath as I start leaving the bookstore. I look at him, and I don’t comment. I don’t know why I feel the way I feel, but I walk out of the shop feeling somehow ashamed, as if I committed a crime without intention. I walk quickly away from the bookstore, squeezing Matthew’s hand.
It’s Tuesday early morning and I am walking the old city of Jerusalem. Matthew and I avoid the harsh sunrays filling the old streets. We stand by the Dome of the Rock, and I find myself unlayering the city around me. Each stone has its own narrative. I feel that in my bones. I feel it within the way I layer my own identities. My body is one but there are so many layers within it: my Syrian-ness, my Canadian-ness, and my queerness to name a few. This city is a living body within itself and its heart is beating. I can hear it. It is beating. I can feel it.
You can help support Tablet’s unique brand of Jewish journalism. Click here to donate today.

Is China ready to end its policy of neutrality?
Abdulrahman Al-Rashed/Arab News/June 04/2019
The dispute over the Huawei communications network is just one battle in a major dispute between China and the US that did not begin yesterday. There is also the issue of Taiwan, the dispute over China’s maritime borders, and the security of Washington’s allies in the region.
There is no doubt that China is an amazing country in its ability to rise as a modern force that is moving forward under an ambitious and quiet program, and expanding throughout the globe and world markets, militarily, technically and economically.
It is clear that we are leaving behind the American unipolar world, which emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. An open multipolar conflict may begin unless the major powers succeed in containing and organizing it.
Later on, this conflict will reach our region, the Middle East, dividing it in the same way it was divided for decades by the Soviet-American conflict. In the meantime, China has smoothly crept into Asia and Africa and under the watchful eyes of Western institutions, which doubt its ultimate goals, and speculate that China is concealing a major project to dominate sources and markets.
It is not new to say that the technological revolution caused the conflict and that a new Cold War is coming. The last Cold War lasted for decades following the invention of nuclear weapons; and, although the fear of mass destruction led to the cessation of major wars, it ignited small wars instead.The dispute over Huawei is mostly about security, although the economic aspect is no less important. China’s dominance in the field of telecommunications networks worries the US, as it could pose a threat to its military capabilities.
The dispute over Huawei is mostly about security, although the economic aspect is no less important.
Most of its strategic weapons — including flights, nuclear weapons and submarines — are operated and controlled by telecommunications. Otherwise, had it been merely an economic competition, the Americans would have struck a partnership deal with the Chinese for access to their markets; as is usually the case in the division of business interests. So far, China seems to have no desire to play a political role on the international stage, especially in our region. However, the American-Chinese confrontation may leave no room for choice, and we will have no option but to return to the world of axes, where every government has to position itself in one camp, against the other. The controversy over Huawei’s right to deploy its fifth generation network opens up differences at a time when it was assumed that cooperation and coexistence could prevail in a world governed by norms and bodies. The likes of the World Trade Organization have heralded an economic globalization that brought countries and peoples closer to a vast global market.
What was the Cold War for those who do not know or remember it? It was a collection of wars fought with conventional weapons in places such as the Congo, Southeast Asia and Indonesia, where the two superpowers were not directly involved. The Middle East was the broadest theater of smaller wars, and the conflicts of the superpowers in this area are likely to become worse later. The Russian-American conflict in Ukraine and the Crimea was one reason for Russia’s intervention in Syria, as well as the ongoing war between Moscow and Washington there.
What about avoiding alliances? Well, those who believe that there is a place for neutrality in this world are wrong. Founded during the Cold War, the Non-Aligned Movement, which has a membership has that reached 120 states, not only had no influence whatsoever, but member states were still willingly or unwillingly aligned to one of the superpowers at the time.
In the years of building up its global position, we have known China as a neutral country that has avoided confrontation and succeeded in not getting involved in wars, despite appeals and attempts to seek its help. But who knows what might happen after the “battle of Huawei” and whether Beijing would be willing to continue with its old policy of neutrality or if it will adopt explicit positions in conflicts and behave accordingly?
*Abdulrahman Al-Rashed is a veteran columnist. He is the former general manager of Al Arabiya news channel, and former editor in chief of Asharq Al-Awsat. Twitter: @aalrashed

Competing interests create bizarre situation in Idlib
Talmiz Ahmad/Arab News/June 04/2019 `
Throughout the month of May, Idlib witnessed heavy fighting between Syrian government forces and rebel groups. The latter is made up of Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), which controls Idlib, and a wide variety of militant groups that have been brought together by Turkey into the so-called National Liberation Front (NLF). The rebels, viewing the government attack as a “battle of survival,” have buried their differences and are fighting together, with weapons provided by Turkey. Thus, Ankara is arming militants who are hostile to its own ally, Russia, against the Assad government, which is backed by Moscow. Convoluted regional politics is behind this bizarre situation. The recent fighting began in early May, when Syrian government forces, supported by Syrian and Russian aircraft, launched an attack in the areas of Hama and Latakia. However, though so far 160 civilians have died and nearly 300,000 have been displaced, these are limited strikes rather than the much-anticipated assault to finally remove the entire rebel presence from Idlib.
Such an attack would have brought a dramatic end to the Russian-Turkish agreement of September 2018, when Russia agreed to hold off an attack on Idlib to give Turkey a chance to separate the “moderate” rebels from the extremists and achieve a peaceful end to the standoff. Turkey had then pleaded that an all-out attack would cause thousands of casualties and push several hundred thousand refugees into Turkey. Since then, there has been no change on the ground, mainly because Turkey has been pursuing a complicated game-plan of its own: It has been trying to get HTS to join the NLF by projecting this extremist group as a moderate outfit. So far, HTS has refused to accommodate Turkish wishes, thus delaying the resolution of the Idlib situation.
Turkey’s view is that, with HTS joining the NLF, it would have a formidable force under its control. This would help consolidate its own long-term presence in northern Syria and also give it the firepower it needs against the Kurds, who are firmly established in northeastern Syria, where they are protected by a US military presence of about 2,200 soldiers.
What, then, does the current fighting mean? Most observers believe that the Syrian government has been encouraged by Russia to initiate this limited attack to convey two messages to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan: One, that Moscow is getting tired of his procrastination over Idlib, particularly his ties with extremist elements. And, two, to remind Turkey of the importance of its relations with Russia, just as Erdogan is being subjected to US pressure to leave the Russians and rejoin the US alliance.
In Turkey-US ties, two matters are currently in dispute: Ankara’s dissatisfaction with the US patronage extended to the Kurds, who are firming up their presence at the Syria-Turkey border; and Turkey’s decision to obtain the S-400 missile system from Russia.
On the Kurdish question, the US has offered a “safe zone” at the border to be patrolled by Turkish troops. Turkey has found this offer inadequate and unacceptable. But the US is not willing to offer more — it values its presence in this region to monitor and restrict Iranian influence, and hence needs the Kurds to provide sturdy military backing to support its regional interests.
Political players continue to jostle on the Syrian chessboard, making it a quagmire for ordinary Syrians.
On the question of defense ties with Russia, the US has adopted a tough posture. If the missile deal goes through, Turkey will be excluded from the program to develop the F-35 jet fighter and the subsequent delivery of 100 aircraft. It will also be subjected to US sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act. This will dilute Turkey’s continued role in NATO, to which it provides the second-largest army. Turkey’s public position is to have the missile system and also remain a partner in the Western alliance, but its brinkmanship may end soon. Turkey has to take a final decision on the Russian missile system over the next week or so. Besides using the stick over Idlib, Russia is also making every effort to soften the blow caused by Turkey’s rupture with the US. In addition to offering the S-400 system, there are indications that Turkey could be made a partner in the joint development of the much-improved S-500 missile system and the Su-57 fifth-generation fighter jet.
To ensure that Turkey remains with the Astana (now Nur-Sultan) alliance, Russian efforts are being backed by Iran. Given the increasing harshness of US sanctions, Tehran has affirmed the importance of its ties with Turkey. To this end, it is playing down their differences in Syria, where Iran opposes the presence of Turkish troops in the north and its efforts to build ties with extremist elements. In the face of US sanctions, Iran has muted its criticism of Turkey on Idlib. Tehran also rejects Turkish military action against the Kurds in the northeast. Here, it is proposing instead that the Kurds join a united, sovereign Syria in a federal arrangement, with the border being patrolled jointly by Turkey and Syria.
Political players continue to jostle on the Syrian chessboard, making it a quagmire for ordinary Syrians.
*Talmiz Ahmad is an author and former Indian ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Oman and the UAE. He holds the Ram Sathe Chair for International Studies at Symbiosis International University in Pune, India.
Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News' point-of-view

After initial triumphalism, Netanyahu finds himself defeated
Yossi Mekelberg/Arab News/June 04/2019
Even for a political system that never shies away from drama and controversy, the events leading to the dissolution of the 21st Israeli Knesset last week were a true cliff-hanger, never seen before in the country’s history. Benjamin Netanyahu was left like the proverbial emperor with very few clothes left, if any.
Who could have predicted back in early April, when the election results looked as if they had helped him stay in power, that this master manipulator of Israeli politics would fail in his attempt to form a fifth coalition government? Netanyahu is no stranger to tough political negotiations, but it became apparent that he was attempting to hijack the entire political system, and with it the country, for his own personal interests. In this instance, he met his no less manipulative and cynical match in former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
For all Netanyahu’s triumphalism following the April 9 elections, weeks later he finds himself defeated, humiliated and out of sorts. Between now and the forthcoming Sept. 17 elections, he will mount the political battle of his life, which may be his last, and he has a reasonable chance of losing it. Anyone hoping for a quiet summer’s respite from Israeli political intrigue and strife can now expect to endure a long, hot season of electioneering.
Netanyahu’s main mistake was that he and his team applied previous negotiation tactics to a situation that was fundamentally different. In past years, such talks were mainly about parties jockeying for more influential ministries, a bigger slice of the budget and more say in legislation. This time around, a strong and crucial personal element was added to the customary “grab as much as you can” approach of potential coalition partners. This was Netanyahu’s desperation to avoid indictment on corruption charges, many months in court, possible conviction and years behind bars.
Perhaps inevitably, the confusion between his struggle for political survival and his search for a “get out of jail” card clouded his judgment and made him blind to his vulnerability. Over the course of his long years in power, he has accumulated a collection of enemies and potential nemeses who can’t wait for him to vacate the political scene. Not many know Netanyahu better — or despise him more — than Lieberman, his former close aide and confidant, who is equally opportunistic and unscrupulous. There was little doubt that, once Lieberman smelt Netanyahu’s blood, he would move in for the kill. After all, he did his political tutoring with Netanyahu, from whom he learned such a buccaneering approach. And now the disciple has outwitted his former master.
Not many know Netanyahu better — or despise him more — than Lieberman, who is equally opportunistic and unscrupulous.
It would be beyond naive to believe that Lieberman refused to join a coalition government because of the contentious proposal to reinstate ultraorthodox youths’ exemption from military service. His populist instincts told him that this is a hot issue with his support base, mainly immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and it touches a raw nerve with most secular voters, who carry the burden and risk of serving in the military.
Lieberman sensed an opportunity to position himself as the champion of the dwindling secular majority in a country increasingly caving in to the demands of the ultraorthodox, including exempting their youth from conscription while many of them live on state benefits for the duration of their religious studies and often beyond. For Lieberman, it was an opportunity to take personal revenge and, along with a cold political evaluation of Netanyahu as being beyond the zenith of his power, it might propel Lieberman to a more influential position. However, it may also bring about the downfall of both men.
Make no mistake, Lieberman might be remembered for his part in the demise of Netanyahu, but he is a very unlikely and unsuitable champion of liberal, democratic secularism, let alone of good governance. He is a settler who has supported the deportation of Palestinians and his party is riddled with corrupt politicians. He himself was investigated for years regarding inappropriate deals with unsavory businessmen.
Lieberman is only part of the story. It was also the deceptive number of 65 right-wing members of Knesset elected to what is now the quickest Knesset to dissolve itself that eclipsed the judgment of Netanyahu and his fellow Likud party negotiators. They, like the narcissistic prime minister and his decadent “L’Etat, c’est moi” attitude, fell into the trap of believing that they too were irreplaceable and beyond reproach, Louis XIV-style.
Nevertheless, Netanyahu’s behavior in trying to ensure, through legislation, first his immunity from prosecution and, second, that the Supreme Court would be prevented from overruling any legislation it considered unconstitutional — and which might also shield him from facing the court — resembles that of a fugitive from justice, rather than a leader of a democratic country. It has exposed him for what he really is.
As the deadline for forming a coalition began to approach, the Israeli prime minister was reduced to groveling, as he revealed his most desperate and pathetic self, offering almost every party or individual member of Knesset the earth and, as a bonus, the moon if they would only join his government. No semblance of ideals or values, no self-respect, no respect for his voters, or for the country and its democratic processes and institutions.
However, it is not all doom and gloom. Almost by miracle, it has also become an opportune moment to bring the curtain down on Netanyahu’s divisive and hugely damaging premiership. Lieberman, in his brutish way, has shown that it is possible. Now it is for decent would-be leaders from his own party to show courage and, if they can’t find it in themselves, it is for Israel’s voters to see a future for themselves and their country — a future that surpasses the vision of both men.
*Yossi Mekelberg is professor of international relations at Regent’s University London, where he is head of the International Relations and Social Sciences Program. Twitter: @YMekelberg