LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
November 14/2019
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Bible Quotations For today
No one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterwards to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Mark 09/38-50/:”John said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.’But Jesus said, ‘Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterwards to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward. ‘If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched. ‘For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.’ “

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News published on November 13-14/2019
France Expresses Willingness to Help Lebanon
Lebanese protesters back in streets, major highways blocked
Protesters Back in Streets, Major Highways Blocked
Minor Skirmishes as Protesters Hold First Large Demo near Baabda Palace
Tensions Soar After President’s Speech, Army Deploys in Baabda
Clashes Erupt at Road-Blocking Protest in Jal el-Dib
Hariri Asks Army, ISF Chiefs to Ensure Demonstrators’ Safety
Jumblat Urges Protesters to Maintain Peacefulness, Carry Lebanese Flags
Berri Says Security Must Have Priority over Anything
In Tripoli, Crushing Poverty Fuels Protests
Army Intelligence Agent Referred to Judiciary over Abu Fakhr Death
Protesters honor Alaa Abou Fakher as rage escalates in the streets

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on November 13-14/2019
Gaza death toll reaches 23 in second day of escalation
Nine Palestinians killed as renewed Israel, Gaza rocket fire intensifies
Netanyahu tells Islamic Jihad ‘stop these attacks or absorb more blows’
Trump greets Erdogan at White House, says Syria ceasefire holding
Pompeo urges Iraqi PM Mahdi to address protesters’ ‘legitimate grievances’
Iraq officials must ‘step up’ to enact reforms: UN envoy
US to reevaluate South Sudan ties after unity gov’t deadline passes
ISIS detainees in Syria a ‘ticking time-bomb’: State Dept official
Russia in talks with Damascus for third base in Syria: Reports
Turkey says it captured ‘important’ ISIS figure in Syria
Turkey says Germany, Netherlands agree to take back ISIS detainees
Turkey police rearrest journalist Ahmet Altan
New kidnapping case reported as female activists targeted in Iraq
UN: Al-Shabab remains ‘potent threat’ in Somalia and region
Islamist-Inspired Party Leader Elected Tunisia House Speaker

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on November 13-14/2019
Lebanon not sick with fever but ill with cancer/Abdulrahman Al-Rashed/Arab News/November 13/2019
Simple Lebanese chant makes a complicated story even more so/Tala Jarjour/Arab News/November 13/2019
Hezbollah could be hastening the demise of the system it is trying so hard to preserve/Michael Young/The National/November 13/2019
Lebanon protesters tell the president: ‘it’s time for father of all to leave’/Sunniva Rose and James Haines-Young/The National/November 13/2019
Lebanon: One Month of Protests/Agence France Presse/Naharnet/November 13/2019
French envoy seeks to resolve deadlock as tensions simmer/Georgi Azar/Annahar/November 13/2019
The U.S.-Israel Military Partnership Should Remain Outside Presidential Politics/Jacob Nagel/FDD/November 13/2019
Erdogan to visit White House after welcoming Iranian terrorist to Turkey/Toby Dershowitz/FDD/November 13/2019
Stars not yet aligned for meaningful change in Iraq/Sir John Jenkins/Arab News/November 13/2019
Erdogan should think twice before ditching US/Chris Doyle/Arab News/November 13/2019

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News published on November 13-14/2019
France Expresses Willingness to Help Lebanon
Naharnet/November 13/2019
The French envoy in Beirut delivered a message to President Michel Aoun from his French counterpart expressing France’s willingness to help Lebanon, the National News Agency reported on Wednesday. The director of the Middle East and North Africa department at the French foreign ministry, Christophe Farnaud met with Aoun where discussions “focused on the latest developments in Lebanon,” said NNA. It added that “Farnaud delivered a message to Aoun from French President Emmanuel Macron expressing France’s willingness to help Lebanon in the current circumstances.” For his part, Aoun said: "I will continue my contacts to hold the binding parliamentary consultations to name a new PM." "Economic conditions are worsening as a result of what the country is going through. The situation will gradually improve when we begin oil and gas exploration," he added. The envoy had earlier met with caretaker foreign minister Jebran Bassil. He left without making a statement. Farnaud is expected to hold meetings later with Speaker Nabih Berri, caretaker PM Saad Hariri, and Army Commander Gen. Joseph Aoun, al-Joumhouria daily reported. On Tuesday he wet with Kataeb chief Sami Gemayel and then a group of representatives of the uprising, said the daily. Farnaud will discuss the ongoing political and economic crisis in the country. He is also expected to meet on Wednesday with Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat and head of the Lebanese Forces party Samir Geagea. On Tuesday evening, protesters led by the leftist Youth Movement for Change rallied outside the French embassy in Beirut to denounce what they called French “interference” in Lebanese affairs, hours after Farnaud arrived in Beirut.

Lebanese protesters back in streets, major highways blocked
Agencies/Wednesday, 13 November 2019
Lebanese protesters are blocking major highways with burning tires and roadblocks, saying they will remain in the streets following a televised interview in which the president urged them to go home. Schools and universities closed on Wednesday, and banks remain shuttered – a reflection of the deepening political and financial crisis the tiny country faces.In a statement on Wednesday, Lebanese President Michel Aoun says the economic situation is deteriorating further as a result of what the country is going through, adding that the start of exploration for oil and gas will help improve the situation gradually.
A man was killed by a Lebanese soldier during Tuesday night protests, marking the first such fatality since nationwide demonstrations engulfed the country on Oct. 17. The protesters took to the streets after President Michel Aoun said in a televised interview that there could be further delays before a new government is formed. He also called on those protesting to go home, warning of a catastrophe if the mass protests keep paralyzing the country. The country has since October 17 been swept by an unprecedented cross-sectarian protest movement against the entire political establishment, which is widely seen as irretrievably corrupt and unable to deal with a deepening economic crisis. The protests triggered Prime Minister Saad Hariri to tender the resignation of his government on October 29, but he remains in a caretaker capacity and maneuverings are still ongoing to form a new cabinet.

Protesters Back in Streets, Major Highways Blocked
Associated PressNaharnet/November 13/2019
Lebanese protesters blocked major highways with burning tires and roadblocks on Wednesday, saying they will remain in the streets despite the president's appeal for them to go home. Schools and universities were closed and banks remained shuttered — a reflection of the deepening political and financial crisis the tiny country faces. A man was killed by a Lebanese soldier during Tuesday night protests, marking the first such fatality since nationwide demonstrations engulfed the country on Oct. 17. The protesters took to the streets after President Michel Aoun said in a televised interview that there could be further delays before a new government is formed, and said the best option was a Cabinet made up of technocrats and politicians to deal with the country's economic and financial troubles. He also urged those protesting to go home, warning of a catastrophe if the mass protests keep paralyzing the country.
Lebanon is passing through its worst economic and financial crisis in decades. It led to anti-government protests that culminated in mid-October as demonstrations spread across much of Lebanon. The protesters are also complaining of widespread corruption and calling an end for the rule of the political elite that has been running the country since the 1975-90 civil war ended. Protesters, who have been calling for a Cabinet made up solely of experts, rejected Aoun's speech. "Our demands are known, we need a technocrat government that is not related to any politician," said protester Melissa Barrak, a sales manager speaking at a major intersection in central Beirut that was closed by the demonstrators. Highways linking Beirut with southern and northern Lebanon as well as other roads in major cities and towns were also closed. Policemen opened Wednesday morning the Fouad Chehab avenue in Beirut, hours it was closed by protesters. In Nahr al-Kalb north of Beirut, protesters closed a tunnel by parking their cars inside it while a nearby highway was filled with debris. In Khaldeh, on Beirut's southern entrance, tires were set on fire and sand barriers closed a vital highway. The place where the first fatality in the protests, Alaa Abou Fakher, was shot in the Khaldeh area was decorated with roses and a Lebanese flag was placed nearby. He was the first to be killed in direct shooting related to the protests, though there have been four other deaths since the demonstrations began. A man was shot and killed in the early days of the protests by a man forcing people to pay bribes to pass through road barriers leading to the airport, while two Syrian workers choked to death when a fire was set inside a downtown Beirut building where they were sleeping. Also, a young man fell inside a building as he was trying to climb to the roof to take photographs. He died days later in hospital. Aoun on Wednesday met with French envoy Christophe Farnaud, who carried a message from France's President Emmanuel Macron expressing Paris' concerns about the situation in Lebanon and its readiness to help the Arab country. France, Lebanon's former colonial ruler, remains a major player in Lebanese politics.

Minor Skirmishes as Protesters Hold First Large Demo near Baabda Palace
Naharnet/November 13/2019
Large numbers of protesters were on Wednesday rallying near the presidential palace in Baabda, in the first major demo in the area since the eruption of the popular uprising on October 17. The protesters were flocking to the area from Beirut, Tripoli and several Lebanese regions. Scuffles erupted as the protesters tried to remove barb wires and metallic barriers. “Security forces managed to stop them after they hurled empty water bottles and stones at them,” the National News Agency said. Responding to a Republic Guard officer’s request that they form a delegation to meet with the president, the protesters chanted: “The people demand and don’t negotiate!” Protesters have been blocking main roads since Tuesday evening, angered by what they viewed as the president ignoring their demands in nearly a month of rallies, and after a protester was shot dead.Aoun said on television that Lebanese who did not see any decent person in power should "emigrate" -- a comment that, despite the presidency scrambling to clarify it, immediately sent protesters onto the streets. One man died of gunshot wounds overnight after an army officer’s driver opened fire at a road-blocking protest in Khalde south of the capital, in the second such death since the start of the largely peaceful protests. Lebanon's unprecedented protest movement has since October 17 called for a complete overhaul of a system they charge is incapable of providing the most basic services and syphoning off state funds. After the government stepped down on October 29, protesters demanded a fresh cabinet of experts not affiliated with any of the traditional political parties, which are divided along sectarian lines. But Aoun in the interview argued that a government made up solely of technocrats would not be able to set policies and would not represent the people. He criticized the street movement's lack of leadership, after previously saying he would be prepared to meet representatives to hear their demands. The protests erupted spontaneously last month against a government plan to tax calls made via free mobile phone applications such as WhatsApp. But they have since morphed into a mass cross-sectarian movement denouncing everything from unemployment and rampant poverty to poor healthcare and endless power cuts. The World Bank says around a third of Lebanese live in poverty and has warned the country's struggling economy could further deteriorate if a new cabinet is not formed rapidly. The former cabinet will remain in a caretaker capacity until a fresh one is formed, but required parliamentary consultations on the matter have not even been scheduled yet. Forming a government typically takes months in Lebanon, with protracted debate on how best to maintain a fragile balance between religious communities. In the interview late Tuesday, Aoun suggested a new cabinet made up of technocrats and politicians. He did not deny the existence of U.S. pressure to exclude his powerful ally, Iran-backed Hizbullah, from any future government, but said he could not be forced to do so as they represented "a third of Lebanese."

Tensions Soar After President’s Speech, Army Deploys in Baabda
Associated Press/November 13/2019
Lebanese army troops on Wednesday deployed heavily near the Presidential Palace in Baabda amid tight security measures, after a night of unrest following President Michel Aoun’s announcement that there could be further delays before a new government is formed. “Army troops deployed in masses in Baabda in case of any emergency,” said the National News Agency. Angry protesters blocked several major highways with burning tires and dirt mounds in protest at Aoun’s remarks. Protesters had poured into the streets Tuesday night closing roads around Lebanon after Aoun said in a televised interview that there could be further delays before a new government is formed. He also defended the role of his allies, Hizbullah, in Lebanon's government. He said it could take days to set a date for consultations with heads of parliamentary blocs for the naming of a new prime minister and added that the best option is for the new Cabinet to include both politicians and technocrats. Protesters have demanded a Cabinet without politicians. A local official for a Lebanese political party was shot dead by soldiers trying to open a road closed by protesters in the Khaldeh neighborhood in southern Beirut late Tuesday, the army reported, marking the first death in 27 days of nationwide protests. An army statement said the army command had opened an investigation into the killing after arresting the soldier. The incident was sure to inflame tensions already running high in the country, which has been engulfed by nationwide protests against the country's entire political class since Oct. 17. The leaderless, economically driven protests were triggered by new proposed taxes and have quickly evolved into the most spread and most sustained Lebanon has seen in years. Prime Minister Saad Hariri resigned his government Oct. 29 in response to the unprecedented nationwide protests since the middle of last month. The protests have snowballed into calls for the government to resign and for the entire political elite that has governed Lebanon since the end of its 1975-90 civil war to step aside. Protesters are demanding a government made up of technocrats that would get immediately to work on the necessary reforms to address the worst economic and financial crisis Lebanon is passing through in decades. Politicians are divided among other things over whether the new Cabinet should be made up of experts only or include politicians.

Clashes Erupt at Road-Blocking Protest in Jal el-Dib
Naharnet/November 13/2019
Clashes erupted Wednesday between protesters and Free Patriotic Movement supporters at a road-blocking protest in Jal el-Dib. Media reports said security forces arrested a man who opened fire in the air to intimidate protesters. “Protesters managed to take the firearm away from the young man who attacked them, smashing the windows of his car,” the National News Agency said. Protesters and FPM supporters meanwhile hurled stones at each other as demonstrators accused their rivals of carrying knives and metal chains and of seeking to reopen the road by force. Security forces have intervened several times to contain the clashes between the two sides. The National News Agency meanwhile said one person was injured in the scuffles. "Men carrying sticks and chains attacked us," said Elie Khoury, an anti-corruption protester in Jal el-Dib, before troops deployed in the area and opened the road that had been closed by burning tires and roadblocks for hours.

Hariri Asks Army, ISF Chiefs to Ensure Demonstrators’ Safety
Naharnet/November 13/2019
The Press Office of caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri issued the following statement on Wednesday: Caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri followed up last night and until the early hours of dawn the events and popular movements in the capital, the suburbs and other areas of Lebanon. For this purpose, he contacted Army Commander General Joseph Aoun and Internal Security Forces Director General Major General Imad Osman, stressing the need to take all measures to protect citizens and ensure the safety of the demonstrators. Prime Minister Hariri also contacted head of the Progressive Socialist Party Walid Jumblat and expressed his condolences for the death of the member of the Choueifat municipality council, Alaa Abu Fakher, who died in the tragic incident during the popular movement in Khalde. Hariri praised the responsible national stance expressed by Jumblat and his call to preserve calm, avoid slipping into chaos and consider the state as the indispensable sanctuary. Hariri called on all citizens in all regions to preserve their peaceful movement and block the way of those who want to fish in troubled waters. He also drew attention to the responsibility of all, the authorities, leaders, military and security institutions and popular movements, to protect the country and show solidarity in facing challenges.

Jumblat Urges Protesters to Maintain Peacefulness, Carry Lebanese Flags
Naharnet/November 13/2019
Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat on Wednesday described slain protester Alaa Abu Fakhr as “the martyr of the Lebanese revolution and the PSP.” “The best way to honor him is to maintain the peaceful revolution, without any tension, upheaval or narrow partisanship,” Jumblat tweeted.
“The protest movement has smashed all barriers and united the Lebanese and Alaa was at the vanguard,” the PSP leader added. He also called for “covering squares and streets with the Lebanese flag exclusively” during Abu Fakhr’s funeral on Thursday.

Berri Says Security Must Have Priority over Anything
Naharnet/November 13/2019
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on Wednesday stressed that “security must have the priority over anything else,” renewing his call for “speeding up the formation of an inclusive government that can fulfill the aspirations of the Lebanese.”Extending condolences to the family of slain protester Alaa Abu Fakhr, who was killed overnight as an army officer’s driver opened fire at a road-blocking protest in Khalde, Berri called for “preserving public order at educational, health and social institutions” and for “safeguarding civil peace and national unity.”Berri also repeated his warning against “falling into the trap of lethal political vacuum.”

In Tripoli, Crushing Poverty Fuels Protests
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/November 13/2019
In a dusty alley streaked with sewage in Lebanon's northern port city of Tripoli, Fatima, her husband and 11 children live crippled by debt and wondering where their next meal is coming from. "We're a poor people here in Tripoli," said the 38-year-old mother, in the city that has taken center stage in Lebanon's ongoing protests denouncing official corruption and inequality. Fresh laundry hangs outside her two-room breeze-block dwelling, its corrugated iron roof held in place by the weight of a few old car tires. "There have been days in the past week when my children haven't had breakfast -- and my little ones milk -- before five o'clock in the evening," said Fatima, whose youngest is just two and a half years old. Her husband sells fish from a cart for a living, and Fatima sometimes helps out with special orders to cook up the fresh catch. But sales have been few and far between since the unprecedented demonstrations erupted nationwide last month, demanding a complete overhaul of the political system. Tripoli has been a hotspot of the anti-government protests and become known as "the bride of the revolution" for its festive night-time rallies.In the beginning Fatima took part, but soon the bus fare to the city's main square became too much. "I stopped going, to spend the money instead on bread and milk for my children," she said. More than half of Tripoli's population live at or below the poverty line, the United Nations says, and more than a quarter live in extreme poverty. Fatima's family are struggling to pay the bills and already up to $5,000 in debt. Her 17-year-old son has left school so he can help provide for the family, and so has her 15-year-old daughter, who must now look after her siblings.The mother fears her other children may soon have to drop out too, because she can't afford the $100 a month for the school bus.
Life 'sweeping stairs'
In a city whose political leaders are among the richest in the nation, Fatima is terrified her children will grow up to a life "sweeping stairs and peddling chewing gum." Forbes magazine this year listed former prime minister Najib Miqati and his brother, who both hail from the city, as being worth $2.5 billion. But in Fatima's neighborhood, dozens of families live in tiny homes without even a connection to the main sewage system. Instead, they have dug small cesspits they cannot afford to empty, and whose foul-smelling contents often leak out into the alleyways or even inside their homes. One woman, aged in her 50s, has placed cement blocks outside her front door to try to protect her 10-year-old autistic son from the wastewater and rats outside. "If a political leader's dog gets sick they rush it off to private hospital, but we can't even treat our children," she said, as around her the scent of fried food mixed with the stench of a blocked toilet. "They come and see us during elections, and then they forget all about us afterwards," she said, preferring not to give her name.
'Kiss 100 hands'
Not far off, Jamal Shaaban said he had resorted to collecting scrap metal to earn money and feed his seven children, and despaired as to how he would ever find them employment. Without personal connections, "I can't find my kids jobs even as porters" in the city's neglected port, said the 40-year-old, wearing a black cap and sunglasses. "I need to kiss a hundred hands -- even for a job as a rubbish collector," he said angrily. Tripoli is now known as a protest center, but from 2007 to 2014 it was infamous for deadly shootouts and bombings. With school dropout rates and unemployment high in its poorer districts, many young residents have joined armed groups in exchange for a little financial support. They have also been easy recruits for extremist groups. "What other future do they expect for a generation brought up in a neighborhood like this?" Shaaban said. "Some people take a wrong turn. But who's to blame -- us or the living conditions?" Several kilometers (miles) away, in a neighborhood pockmarked with bullets holes, Amina Abdallah Sweid said she was struggling to feed her five children after their father was killed in the clashes. In the past few days, she said they had been living off a single bag of potatoes donated by a relative and some bread from the neighbors. Her children sometimes collect scrap metal to sell, but even on a good day that only fetches around six dollars. That means, she said, that "there's nothing left for us to do but beg".

Army Intelligence Agent Referred to Judiciary over Abu Fakhr Death
Naharnet/November 13/2019
An army intelligence agent involved in the Khalde incident that resulted in the death of the protester Alaa Abu Fakhr was referred to the judiciary on Wednesday. “The Intelligence Directorate has referred First Adjutant Charbel Hjeil to the relevant judicial authorities after interrogating him over the incident that resulted in the martyrdom of Alaa Abu Fakhr,” the Army Command’s Orientation Directorate said in a statement. Media reports said Hjeil was in a white vehicle carrying an army colonel when an altercation with protesters erupted in the Khalde area where demonstrators were blocking the road. An army statement issued Tuesday had said that military personnel opened fire in a bid to disperse protesters.

Protesters honor Alaa Abou Fakher as rage escalates in the streets
Christy-Belle Geha/Annahar/November 13/2019
Infuriated protesters and Abou Fakher’s PSP comrades described him as “the revolution’s martyr.”
BEIRUT: On the 28th day of the revolution, protesters expressed their grief with chants and candles in honour of protester Alaa Abou Fakher, who was shot and killed on Tuesday night in Khaldeh.
An army statement said a soldier opened fire to disperse the crowd after an altercation, hitting Abou Fakher, identified as a local official with the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) and member of the Choueifat municipality. The statement also added that an investigation has been opened following the soldier’s arrest. Abou Fakher was briefly hospitalized in a critical condition to Kamal Jumblatt Hospital before succumbing to his wounds. PSP leader Walid Jumblatt and his son MP Taymur Jumblatt arrived at the hospital around midnight, where the Druze leader urged demonstrators to “count on the state only” or to avoid a "phase of chaos." Caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri also emphasized Jumblatt’s statement on Twitter, reminding "everyone of their responsibility to protect the country and to collaborate in order to face our challenges.”Infuriated protesters and Abou Fakher’s PSP comrades described him as “the revolution’s martyr.”Lawyer Tony Mikhael expressed on Twitter how “harsh" the scene of Abou Fakher's passing was, describing it as "a scene that shakes thrones and emotions.” Joseph Chidiac, a protestor, described to Annahar his dismay at the death of a man "who was demanding his basic human rights in front of his kids."“Will innocent men and women forever be killed in this country? When will this stop?” he asked.

*Lebanon not sick with fever but ill with cancer
Abdulrahman Al-Rashed/Arab News/November 13/2019
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/80529/%d8%b9%d8%a8%d8%af-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b1%d8%ad%d9%85%d9%86-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b1%d8%a7%d8%b4%d8%af-%d9%84%d9%85%d9%86-%d8%aa%d9%8f%d9%82%d8%b1%d8%b9-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b7%d9%86%d8%a7%d8%ac%d8%b1-%d9%81%d9%8a/
Some like to portray the situation in Lebanon as there being a secret society that is governing the country, made up of clerics, bankers, politicians, and arms and drugs dealers. That is why real change seems almost impossible or unlikely for another decade.
The surprise is in the large number of citizens taking to the streets, banging on pots, and turning their anger against politicians into a daily celebration all over the country, successfully drawing attention to the main economic and political issues. Collective complaints have united the Lebanese for the first time since the country was divided in the mid-1970s, most saliently along political or sectarian lines.
The anger was entirely aimed at the upper echelons of government, namely the Christian president, the Sunni prime minister, the Shiite speaker of parliament, as well as at hidden forces such as the leader of Hezbollah, who has a parallel army and more powers than the state itself.
Most of the therapeutic solutions issued by the captains of the sunken ship seem to be a ploy to buy more time
Most of the therapeutic solutions issued by the captains of the sunken ship seem to be a ploy to buy more time. Time is, in fact, the cheapest commodity in Lebanon, as the country is in a near-permanent, ongoing crisis that is unparalleled, except for the Palestinian cause. It is puzzling that there is no compelling reason why civilian life has not returned to normal since the end of the civil war. The war ceased in 1990, but the regime of war continued.
In the current crisis, ideas for a recipe for economic remedies, a reduction in government expenditures and the fight against corruption were put forward. However, Lebanon is not sick with fever but ill with cancer. Thus, reducing expenses and arresting a few fat cats will not convince international investors or Lebanese expatriates and the migrations will continue; and people will return to the street to complain.
Lebanon needs an integrated rehabilitation of the regime so that it does not continue to be a problem for its citizens and a problem for the region. Lebanon constitutes a problem for the region because it is being used as a platform to recruit mercenaries to fight in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and a market used for foreign governments and organizations to serve different agendas. In the light of this chaotic and perplexing situation, the proposed political and economic remedies will only succeed in prolonging the life of the crisis and exhausting the sick state.
Optimists believed that salvation was coming when information was leaked about the discovery of oil and gas off the coast of Lebanon. After five years of waiting, they know it is a mirage. Even if oil and gas were to be drilled and exports begin next January, as the French company Total says, it will not solve the problems of Lebanon while the same political structure remains in power.
The agreement between various political forces to share oil profits will ensure the status quo remains for many years to come, while oil will also increase conflicts and the use of religion and external alliances to maintain internal balances of power. Let us not forget that oil has been produced in countries such as Yemen, Sudan and Syria, and these countries have only witnessed more misery; it did not make their governments more compassionate or successful, even when the price of a barrel was above $100.
Without an updated political system that guarantees a minimum of stability, sovereignty and justice, as well as ending foreign alliances, Iranian and others, and stopping internal looting, the crisis will not shrink, but will grow, and people will return to protest and bang on cans and pots.
• 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

Simple Lebanese chant makes a complicated story even more so
Tala Jarjour/Arab News/November 13/2019
Three weeks on, and Lebanon’s demonstrations show no sign of abating. Prime Minister Saad Hariri has tendered his resignation and reform bills have been presented, yet more Lebanese continue to take to the streets. This week, students are leaving their schools and universities to join and women are a noticeable presence. Formations change, songs come and go, but one line remains firm. “All of them means all of them,” the blunt slogan “kellun yaani kellun” is turning out to be a much more serious demand in the sectarian state system than the wildest political guesses might have risked a few months ago.
Lebanon’s multiple postwar political alliances, along with the names under which they operate, have constantly crossed conventional religious and ideological lines. Groupings worked at times under traditional political labels, and at others they followed confessional categories. But parties and alliances have also been labeled with numbers that referred to the dates of particularly divisive events, such as the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri or the mass protests ignited in its aftermath. While subnational labels shifted, song seemed to forge its own political sphere — one that rarely obeyed strategic fault lines.
The political songs of Julia Boutros, the Christian singer who has family roots in Southern Lebanon, are a helpful example. While Boutros’ was not the only voice to be coined with patriotic song in Lebanon, she has been significant in forming a nationalistic sentiment that was based on the shared value of territorial integrity, individual and collective dignity, power and resistance. Her appeal, which emerged with her appearance as a talented child singer in the 1970s and 1980s, was contemporaneous with a uniquely common goal in the divisive years of the Lebanese war: Resisting the Israeli military presence, and aggression, in Southern Lebanon.
Yet even that semblance of a unified political purpose was not consistent, nor was it complete. Between the aftermath of the 1982 invasion, in which Israeli forces reached Beirut, and the subsequent creation of a security zone, where military control was shared between the Israeli army and its Lebanese allies (the South Lebanon Army), the desire to regain control over all Lebanese territory was hardly regional. Until the sudden withdrawal of Israeli forces in May 2000, Southern Lebanon remained a tender point in the national body. One singer whose output kept focus on the matter over the decades was Boutros. Her songs became emblematic of resistance against the foreign military presence, as well as all forms of intimidation, even when one faction’s aggressors were another’s allies.
“The sun of truth has been eclipsed; dawn became sunset,” opens Boutros’ 1985 song “Ghabet Shams El Haq.” “We refuse to die. Tell them we will stay. Your land, and homes. The hard-working people. Hear. Oh south. My beloved south,” goes the refrain. Written on the heels of the Israeli invasion and in the midst of a bloody war, this song reliably roused masses for decades. As late as the 2010s, audiences of thousands sent the loudest cheers within two seconds of the opening musical line, singing along with precision. Although the Israeli presence in Southern Lebanon eventually ceased in 2000 (in all but a small strip of land that continues to be contested by multiple sides), the power of Boutros’ song had not waned.
Similarly to almost every other local political loyalty, Boutros’ allegiance to a coalition of theocratic and socialist ideologies was a complicated one. The multiple layers of her fan base’s political commitment to Hezbollah and its leftist supporters were only compounded by the national alliance Hezbollah subsequently forged with Michel Aoun — to the dismay of members of the Christian former army general’s ultranationalist supporters at the right end of the political spectrum. Still, Boutros’ songs continued to bring large audiences to their feet, at least until a year or two ago.
New to office or old powerbrokers, ‘all means all’ remains the street’s unwavering demand for the political elite’s departure.
The last three weeks, however, have successfully blurred not only the fine gradations of the politico-confessional spectrum and its variations of the last four decades, but also the large brushstrokes that united people across its lines, few and far between as those brushstrokes have been.
Today, a new fault line in power alignments is unfolding in the Lebanese public square. Shocking the system and its maintainers alike, the binary split cuts across seemingly unmovable blocks. Like never before, the new “us” and “them” arrangement is as simple as it is clear. In a political environment where neither simplicity nor clarity seemed conceivable, the people of Lebanon have made up their mind: It is “us” the people against “them” the politicians. New to office or old powerbrokers, “all means all” remains the street’s unwavering demand for the political elite’s departure.
In three words, each chanted to one beat and followed by a silent fourth, the rhythmic Arabic slogan encapsulates a singularity that hardly anyone thought possible. Still, like many norm-challenging ideas, in its simplicity this uncompromising demand belies much difficulty.
*Tala Jarjour is author of “Sense and Sadness: Syriac Chant in Aleppo” (OUP, 2018). She is currently Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London and Associate Fellow of Pierson College at Yale.

Hezbollah could be hastening the demise of the system it is trying so hard to preserve
Michael Young/The National/November 13/2019
By first trying to deflate protester demands for better, less corrupt governance and economic management, the group's leader Hassan Nasrallah was seen as the defender of an intolerable status quo
On Tuesday, Lebanese president Michel Aoun sat down with two journalists to speak about the worst crisis his country has seen since the end of the civil war in 1990. For nearly a month, nationwide protests have taken place because of deteriorating economic conditions and the pervasive corruption of the ruling class. The protesters have been demanding a government free of politicking, clientelism and sectarianism.
It has been more than two weeks since prime minister Saad Hariri resigned. Despite a worsening financial crisis, the political forces seem no closer to forming a government. Mr Hariri would like to form a government made up of technocrats. Not only is that what the protesters are demanding but the prime minister believes this is a prerequisite for outside assistance to Lebanon. A government filled with career politicians – or even one mixing politicians and technocrats – is not one that would generate confidence at home or internationally.
Yet Mr Aoun, who is apparently tone deaf, repeated in his interview that he backed a mixed cabinet and that he could not prevent the return of his son-in-law Gebran Bassil as a minister. Mr Bassil, whom protesters consider highly corrupt, is among the most reviled of Lebanese politicians. His return would represent an insult to the protest movement. Even as Mr Aoun was still speaking, people throughout the country began blockading roads in anger.
Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah, by trying to impose a mixed cabinet against popular will, might hinder the foreign aid that is needed to avert an economic collapse
Mr Aoun and Mr Bassil are backed by Hezbollah in opposing a technocratic government in which they would not be represented. Hezbollah is worried that if it is left out of the government, this would the first step in isolating the party and ultimately disarming it. From the start, Hezbollah’s secretary general Hassan Nasrallah viewed the protests as a threat to a political order that has long protected the party. That is why he initially sought to undermine the demonstrations by sending thugs to attack protesters.
This attitude has created a contradiction that will continue to profoundly affect Hezbollah, and Lebanon more broadly. Nasrallah, by trying to impose a mixed cabinet against the popular will, might hinder the foreign financial assistance that is needed to avert an economic collapse. This in turn could hasten the breakdown of the system he is trying so hard to preserve.
At the same time, Nasrallah has turned Hezbollah into another focus of the protesters’ frustrations. By first trying to deflate their demands for better, less corrupt governance and economic management, he was seen as the defender of an intolerable status quo. This is no small thing for a party that has made its purported solidarity with the deprived a part of its identity.
Hezbollah’s threat perception is tied not only to events in Lebanon but more broadly to the situation in Iraq and the party’s relationship with Iran. Iraqi protesters have spent weeks defying a corrupt political order bolstered by Iran and its Iraqi proxies, leading demonstrators to target symbols of Tehran’s influence. In fact, on October 30, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei seemed alarmed enough by developments to state that the Lebanese and Iraqi protests were the work of the US and its partners, which angered protesters.
In his latest speech on Monday, Nasrallah did not mention the formation of a new government, saying that negotiations were ongoing. However, he did spend a great deal of time talking about the party’s martyrs, since November 11 was Hezbollah’s Martyrs Day. It was his way of rallying his community around the party at a time when even the Shiites have been joining the Lebanese protests.
But the reality is that Hezbollah has yet to resolve its dilemma with Mr Hariri. However, Mr Aoun’s support for a mixed political-technocratic government appeared to signal that both Hezbollah and the Aounists have decided to press ahead if Mr Hariri remains unwilling to head a mixed government. This is very risky, since such a government would be opposed not only by a wide cross-section of Lebanon’s population but also by much of the international community, and most critically by vital western donors.
If that is what Mr Aoun and Hezbollah decide, Lebanon will be in for difficult times ahead. The protests will continue and doubtless escalate, with uncertainty as to how Hezbollah might react. The possibility of violence is definitely there, particularly if the economic situation collapses, as seems increasingly inevitable.
If the government were to attempt to repress the protests using unrestricted force, the most probable outcome would be some sort of rift in the Lebanese state, as the army seems unwilling to carry out such action. If Hezbollah itself attempts to intimidate the protesters and possibly moves into areas of non-Shiite religious sects to do so, this would almost certainly lead to civil war.
Whatever the outcome, Mr Aoun’s reckless decision to ignore the protesters, a step that Hezbollah has supported, means that both are taking Lebanon into the unknown. Even if the country could avoid a domestic conflict, a clearly pro-Hezbollah government rejected by most Lebanese would not avert an economic calamity or isolation from the west and the Arab world. Lebanon could find itself on its own, perhaps as the Venezuela of the Middle East.
*Michael Young is editor of Diwan, the blog of the Carnegie Middle East programme, in Beirut

Lebanon protesters tell the president: ‘it’s time for father of all to leave’
Sunniva Rose and James Haines-Young/The National/November 13/2019
On day 28 of mass demonstrations against government, people block motorway to presidential palace
Protesters closed the highway from the Lebanese capital to Baabda Palace on Wednesday and refused an invitation to meet President Michel Aoun. The demonstration outside the presidential palace came on the 28th day of the mass uprising against the government and decades of corruption.
On Wednesday evening, men with guns and knives arrived at a protest in Jal El Dib, north of Beirut, leading to fights with protesters. At least one man fired into the air before being disarmed. Earlier in the day, Mr Aoun conveyed a message through the presidential guard for the protesters outside the palace to send in a delegation to discuss their demands. But the demonstrators refused to send a small number of people, insisting that if the president wanted to hear their complaints he would have to speak to all those gathered.
 The previous night, street protests erupted across Lebanon after President Michel Aoun defended the role of his allies, the Shiite movement Hezbollah, in Lebanon's government, cutting off several major roads in and around Beirut, the northern city of Tripoli and the eastern region of Bekaa. In his televised address, Aoun proposed a government that includes both technocrats and politicians.
Protesters expressed anger at an interview Mr Aoun gave on Wednesday evening, in which he said: “If they do not like any person in authority, let them emigrate.”
“He told us, ‘If you don’t like what is happening, just leave',” said Guy Younes, 29, a civil engineer. "How is that possible in any country in the world? This is so stupid. He wants us to leave, 250,000 people to leave.
Architecture student Nicholas Habib, 25, said: “We have a lot of requests. The first is the resignation of Michel Aoun and then we have to make selections and a technocratic Cabinet.
“We want technocrats, we do not want politicians. It is engineers who are going to be judges and in the ministries, people who have nothing to do with politics.”
Mr Habib said Mr Aoun’s speech on Wednesday night angered him. “How can a president of a republic say that to his people?” he asked.
But Mr Habib said he was optimistic that the president would eventually be forced to resign.
People chanted, “We won’t go until the ‘father of all’ leaves,” using Mr Aoun’s self-given title. “Leave, leave, leave, your presidency is starving people.” Marie-Therese Tabet, 65, who lives in Beirut, called for a new government that could stop the brain drain. “Our children, who are supposed to work, are highly educated people, hyper-responsible, but can’t find a way out so they go abroad where they succeed," Ms Tabet said.
"Why not take advantage of these brains to maintain this country?”
Two women standing on the motorway to Baabda said the president’s message had been provocative and spurred people to hit the streets on Wednesday. “Instead of calming things down, people got very angry and it’ll probably push the level of anger and tension even higher,” one of the women said. “Of course we don’t trust him. Why would the people trust a government that failed them for years and years? "He was just not listening to what people were saying, and it ended up with a terrible outcome last night.” On Tuesday evening, Alaa Abou Fakher, 38, a father of three and a member of the Choueifat Municipality who supported of the Progressive Socialist Party, died after being shot by a solider.
The army announced that the soldier was arrested and an investigation launched after Abou Fakher’s death as the military tried to clear a motorway in the Khaldeh area just south of Beirut. It is unclear why the soldier opened fire and whether he intentionally shot the protester.
The exact details of the incident remain unclear but images on social media show Abou Fakher lying in a pool of blood next to his wife one of his sons.
The Daily Star newspaper reported that he was shot after an argument with a member of the Mount Lebanon Intelligence Branch.The newspaper reported that Abou Fakher was related to the officer who shot him and said the pair knew each other well. His widow called on people to take to the streets, saying “no one should remain in their homes", local media reported.
Abou Fakher was the first protester killed by the military but official sources told The National it was the fifth death of the protests. The sources said, however, that it was hard to put an exact figure on casualties because they were not directly tied to the protests or the military. Demonstrations have been largely peaceful, except for a few scuffles with the security forces and government supporters, The source said that on the first night of the protests, two Syrian workers choked to death from a fire that spread to a building near major protests in the capital. On October 19, Hussein Al Attar was stabbed in an altercation with a man trying to bribe people to pass a roadblock near the airport, and Omar Zakarina died days after falling from roof of the old theatre in downtown Beirut on the same day. Caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri spoke with army chief Gen Joseph Aoun and the head of the Internal Security Forces, Maj Gen Imad Osman, late on Tuesday evening. Mr Hariri told them of the "need to take all measures to protect citizens and ensure the safety of the demonstrators". He also spoke with Druze leader Walid Jumblatt to express condolences for Abou Fakher's death and thanked the leader of the Progressive Socialist Party for his call for calm.Meanwhile, the Minister for Telecoms, Mohamed Choucair, and Information Minister Jamal Jarrah appeared before financial prosecutor Ali Ibrahim to answer questions on claims of squandering public funds.
France has extended an offer to assist Beirut, a tweet from Baabda Palace said. It did not indicate what assistance Paris was offering but the French ambassador Bruno Foucher has been meeting politicians and the Foreign Ministry’s envoy to the Middle East, Christophe Farnaud, visited the president.

Lebanon: One Month of Protests
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/November 13/2019
Lebanon has been paralyzed by nearly a month of mounting protests demanding an overhaul of the entire political system.
Here is a recap:
- Anger at 'WhatsApp tax' -
On October 17, the government announces a tax on calls made via messaging apps such as WhatsApp, widely used in Lebanon. Coming amid a looming economic crisis in a country whose infrastructure remains decrepit almost three decades since the end of its civil war, the announcement is seen by many as a step too far. Thousands take to the streets in Beirut and the cities of Sidon and Tripoli, some chanting "the people demand the fall of the regime". There are clashes near government headquarters in Beirut as demonstrators try to storm the building. Security forces fire tear gas to try to disperse crowds. Hundreds of protestors also block major highways and set refuse bins and tires alight. The government scraps the messaging app tax later the same day, but the protests continue.
- Demos grow -
On October 18, thousands of demonstrators from a broad spectrum of sects and political affiliations bring the capital to standstill. They demand an overhaul of the political system, citing a broad range of grievances from austerity measures and state corruption to poor infrastructure and rampant electricity cuts. The army reopens some highways and disperses a huge crowd in central Beirut with water cannon and tear gas. Dozens are arrested. The demonstrations swell over the following days, with major gatherings also in second city Tripoli and other centers.
- Reforms announced -
On October 19, the Lebanese Forces party pulls its four ministers from the cabinet. On October 21, Prime Minister Saad Hariri announces his government has approved a raft of economic reforms, including halving the salaries of lawmakers and ministers. But protests continue and demonstrators dismiss the new measures as insufficient.
- Hizbullah backs government -
On October 25, the leader of Hizbullah -- which with its allies holds a majority in parliament -- tells supporters not to take part in the protests. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah also warns of chaos should the government resign. On October 26, Hizbullah mobilizes counter-demonstrations, sparking scuffles with demonstrators.
- Government resigns -
On October 29, dozens of counter-demonstrators attack anti-government protesters in Beirut, torching tents and tearing down banners. That evening, Hariri submits his resignation and that of his government, prompting cheers and dancing in the streets. It is the 13th day of protests. The following day, President Michel Aoun asks the government to stay on until a new cabinet is formed. Protesters regroup over the next days, demanding a government of experts, independent of traditional political parties divided along sectarian lines.
- Students join in -
In a live television address on November 3, Aoun announces plans to tackle corruption, reform the economy and form a civil government. But thousands of protesters stream back into Beirut's Martyrs' Square, chanting "Revolution!"On November 6 hundreds of schoolchildren lead demonstrations across the country. The following day thousands of university and high school students also take to the streets.
- Protester dies -
On November 12, Aoun says in a television interview that Lebanese unhappy with those in power should "emigrate." He also criticizes the protest movement's lack of leadership.His remarks spark a new eruption of demonstrations, with protesters blocking off roads in the capital. An army officer’s driver opens fire during a road-blocking protest in Khalde south of Beirut, shooting a man who later dies of his injuries.

French envoy seeks to resolve deadlock as tensions simmer
Georgi Azar/Annahar/November 13/2019
Farnaud, the French Foreign Ministry’s envoy for the Middle East and North Africa, had landed in Beirut Tuesday in Beirut for talks with senior officials centred around breaking the deadlock
BEIRUT: France threw its support behind Lebanon as it grapples with political and economic turmoil, a day after President Michel Aoun's speech aimed at easing tensions seemingly backfired.
While the message was being delivered to Aoun by a French envoy, hundreds of disgruntled protestors gathered in the vicinity of the Baabda Presidential Palace after security forces set up a security perimeter.
Aoun assured Macron’s envoy, Christophe Farnaud, that discussions over a new government are still underway with "parliamentary consultations set to be announced soon."
The Cabinet, according to a statement released by his office, would include both independent technocrats and members of Lebanon's political parties in order for the government "to secure Parliament's vote of confidence."
Aoun made similar comments a day earlier, hinting that a "techno-political" government is the most likely avenue moving forward. This sent shockwaves and angered protestors who hit the streets to block roads and main highways linking Beirut to Tropili and Sidon.
Farnaud delivered a message to Aoun “stressing France’s interest in Lebanon’s situation and its willingness to help Lebanon in the current circumstances,” as Lebanon's wrestles with nationwide strikes and protests, coupled with a looming financial meltdown. Dollar liquidity remains scarce while banks have remained shuttered for the 5th consecutive day citing security concerns.
Aoun, in an attempt to urge protestors to show good faith, had insisted that decent and honest individuals public office still exist.
“If people aren’t satisfied with any of the decent leaders let them immigrate,” he said, with the ostensible blunder taken out of context while a number of protesters labelled them as insensitive. As tensions ran high, a protester in Khaldeh was gunned down with concerned authorities launching an investigation to determine the circumstances surrounding the killing.
Farnaud, the French Foreign Ministry’s envoy for the Middle East and North Africa, had landed in Beirut Tuesday for talks with senior officials centred around breaking the deadlock that has gripped Lebanon since Prime Minister Saad Hariri submitted his resignation over two weeks ago.
The visit is also seen as an attempt by France, a longtime ally of the small Mediterranean country, to urge rival leaders to accelerate the formation of a new Cabinet.
Aoun acknowledged Lebanon's dire financial state, "aggravated further as a result of the ongoing demonstrations and employee strikes," a day after a number of state institutions have gone on strike, including the Syndicate of Bank employees and Touch and Alfa workers.
Offshore oil and gas explorations set to begin in the coming months, however, are bound to offer economic relief to the heavily indebted country, Aoun said.
Farnaud then met with Hariri, with sources telling Annahar that the caretaker premier has yet to shift his position as things currently stand.
Hariri has been adamant in his demand to preside over a Cabinet comprised entirely of independent technocrats which has been rebuked by both the Free Patriotic Movement and its Shiite ally Hezbollah.
Hezbollah clinging to the Cabinet, sources say, is seen as a clear-cut effort to guarantee the impregnability of its military arsenal.
"We cannot discount Hezbollah, which represents two-thirds of Lebanese people," Aoun said Monday.
"What the west is asking of us is simply impossible," he told journalists, in reference to reports of the U.S' concerted push to further isolate the Iranian-backed militant group.
What started out as a protest against a proposed WhatsApp taxes has ballooned into a massive popular uprising calling for an overhaul of the confessional-based system that has been in place since the end of the civil war in 1990.
Demonstrations have remained largely peaceful across Lebanon with the army succeeding in finding a balance between protestors, on one hand, and those who have taken offence to roads being blocked, on the other.
A scuffle broke out in Jal el Dib at the close of day after an infuriated resident opened fire above protestors who had blocked the inner roads of the area. A fistfight moments earlier also broke out with a number of injuries reported.
The army, who had been absent since the early hours of the morning, quickly made its way to the scene in a bid to restore calm.
Late Tuesday, Hariri took to Twitter urging Army Commander Gen. Joseph Aoun and Internal Security Forces head Maj. Gen. Imad Othman "to take all measures that protect citizens and ensure safety for the protesters."

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on November 13-14/2019
Gaza death toll reaches 23 in second day of escalation
REUTERS/November 13, 2019
JERUSALEM: Israeli air strikes killed 13 Palestinians in Gaza on Wednesday, medical officials said, raising the Palestinian death toll to 23 over a two-day escalation in violence since Israel launched strikes to kill an Islamic Jihad commander. From early morning rockets from Gaza were fired into Israel and the Israeli military struck from the air, resuming after an overnight lull. There were reports of injuries but no deaths inside Israel, where the military said it shot many of the rockets down with air defenses. The bodies of six people were brought to Gaza’s Shifa hospital in taxis and ambulances early Wednesday, as relatives wept and screamed. Medics and witnesses said they were civilians who lived in densely populated neighborhoods. In the north of Gaza City, family members said Rafat Ayyad and his two sons Islam, 25, and Ameer, aged 9, were killed by Israeli fire while rushing to hospital to visit another son who had earlier been injured in a separate attack. “I got wounded and I called my father. He was coming to see me in hospital and two of my brothers were with him on the motorcycle when they were hit by Israel,” Loay Ayyad, 18, told Reuters during the funeral.
The Israeli military said that it had struck at least five rocket squads on Wednesday morning. Other targets included a rocket warhead manufacturing facility, an Islamic Jihad headquarters and a weapons storage site. Islamic Jihad confirmed that two of its members were killed in separate strikes. Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad offered terms on Wednesday for an Egyptian-mediated Gaza ceasefire with Israel, saying that if these were not met it could continue cross-border attacks indefinitely. The terms laid out by Islamic Jihad leader Zeyad Al-Nakhala in an interview with Al-Mayadeen TV included an end to Israel's targeted killings of militants and Gaza border protesters as well as measures to ease a blockade on the Palestinian enclave.
The fighting, the worst in months, erupted on Tuesday after Israel killed Baha Abu Al-Atta, a senior commander of the Iran-backed Islamic Jihad militant group, accusing him of masterminding and planning attacks against Israel. In response to the killing of Atta and his wife, Islamic Jihad fired about 200 rockets into Israel on Tuesday, resuming on Wednesday morning. “We will not allow the enemy to return to the policy of cowardly assassination under any circumstances,” said a statement by the ‘Joint Command’ of Palestinian armed factions.  The joint command includes Hamas, the much larger group that controls Gaza. But while Hamas appeared to be giving the green light for Islamic Jihad to continue, the larger group did not appear to be launching rockets itself, a decision that could reduce the likelihood of the violence escalating further. Hamas and Israel have managed to defuse previous confrontations and to avoid a full-scale conflict for the past five years, following three wars from 2008-2014. In the past Israel has held Hamas responsible for rockets fired by any group in Gaza, but this time it appeared to be avoiding Hamas targets. UN Middle East peace envoy Nickolay Mladenov said he was “very concerned about the ongoing and serious escalation between Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Israel, following the targeted killing of one of the group’s leaders inside Gaza yesterday. The rockets from Gaza sent Israelis rushing to shelters in towns near the Gaza border and deeper in the country, with air raid sirens going off as far north as Tel Aviv and missiles striking Israeli highways and towns. The Israeli military assembled armored vehicles along the border with Gaza, though a ground incursion into the territory seemed unlikely at this stage. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel, having killed the Islamic Jihad commander, was not interested in a broader conflict. “We don’t want escalation, but we are responding to every attack against us with a very sharp attack and response. Islamic Jihad best understand that now rather than when it’s too late for it,” Netanyahu said. In Gaza, schools and most government offices remained closed for a second day, as were schools in much of southern Israel. Israel captured Gaza in a 1967 war and withdrew troops and settlements in 2005. The territory has been controlled since 2007 by Hamas while under an Israeli security blockade, also backed by Egypt. The blockade has wrecked Gaza’s economy, and the United Nations says its 2 million residents have only limited access to electricity, clean water and medicine.

Nine Palestinians killed as renewed Israel, Gaza rocket fire intensifies
Reuters, Jerusalem/Gaza/Wednesday, 13 November 2019
Israeli air strikes killed nine Palestinians in Gaza on Wednesday, medical officials said, raising the Palestinian death toll to 22 over a two-day escalation in violence since Israel launched strikes to kill an Islamic Jihad commander, according to the Gaza health ministry. From early morning Gaza militants fired rockets into Israel and the Israeli military struck from the air, resuming after an overnight lull. The bodies of six people killed in Gaza City were brought into Shifa hospital in taxis and ambulances early Wednesday, as relatives wept and screamed. Medics and witnesses said they were civilians who lived in densely populated neighborhoods. A father and his son were among the dead with another son badly wounded, said family members.
“They started this, we did not want war,” said one grieving relative. The Israeli military said on Wednesday it had resumed attacking Islamic Jihad targets in the Gaza Strip. Air strikes took out at least three rocket launching crews, a military spokesman said. Islamic Jihad confirmed that two of its militants were killed in separate strikes south of Gaza City during the morning. Medics later said another man was killed by an air strike while on a motorcycle. The worst fighting in months erupted on Tuesday after Israel killed Abu al-Atta, a senior commander of the Iran-backed Islamic Jihad militant group, accusing him of masterminding and planning attacks against Israel. In response to the killing of Atta and his wife, Islamic Jihad fired about 200 rockets into Israel on Tuesday, resuming on Wednesday morning. Despite attempts by diplomats to restore calm, an Islamic Jihad official told Reuters that his group told mediators it intended to carry on its retaliatory attacks. “Attempts to restore calm did not succeed, the Islamic Jihad see that it is time to respond to the assassination policy, which was revived by the Zionist enemy,” the official said, asking not to be identified. “The enemy will pay the price of its foolishness and we are determined to confront this aggression with all our might.”
Sirens and explosions
The rockets from Gaza sent Israelis rushing to shelters in towns near the Gaza border and deeper in the country, with air raid sirens going off as far north as Tel Aviv and missiles striking Israeli highways and towns. There were no reports of deaths in Israel. The Israeli military assembled armored vehicles along the border with Gaza, though a ground incursion into the territory seemed unlikely at this stage. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel, having taken out the Islamic Jihad commander, was not interested in a broader conflict. “We don’t want escalation, but we are responding to every attack against us with a very sharp attack and response. Islamic Jihad best understand that now rather than when it’s too late for it,” Netanyahu said at the start of cabinet meeting. In Gaza, schools and most government offices remained closed for a second day, as were schools throughout much of southern Israel.
Israel captured Gaza in a 1967 war and withdrew troops and settlements in 2005. The territory has been controlled since 2007 by Hamas while under an Israeli security blockade, also backed by Egypt, which has wrecked its economy.

Netanyahu tells Islamic Jihad ‘stop these attacks or absorb more blows’
AFP, Jerusalem/Wednesday, 13 November 2019
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Islamic Jihad militants in Gaza must stop rocket attacks or “absorb more and more blows” as an escalation of violence raged for a second day. “They have one choice: to stop these attacks or absorb more and more blows. Their choice,” Netanyahu said at the start of a cabinet meeting, adding that Israel was not seeking a further escalation. He reiterated his warning that “this could take time” and said Israel would respond to attacks “without mercy.”The exchange of fire between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza began on Tuesday with an Israeli targeted strike killing an Islamic Jihad commander. Israel said the commander was responsible for rocket fire against it as well as other attacks and was planning more violence. Gaza militants retaliated with barrages of rocket fire and Israel responded with air strikes targeting what it said were Islamic Jihad sites and rocket-launching squads. A total of 19 Palestinians have been killed so far. No one has been killed in Israel, though rockets have caused damage and sent residents rushing to bomb shelters. The army says some 220 rockets have been fired into Israel since Tuesday morning, with dozens intercepted by air defenses.

Trump greets Erdogan at White House, says Syria ceasefire holding
Reuters/Wednesday, 13 November 2019
President Donald Trump told reporters that the Syrian ceasefire is holding very well, as he hosted a high-level White House meeting with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday. Trump said that the US relationship with Turkey is good and his administration is speaking to the Kurds, who seem satisfied. Trump said that he and Erdogan would also discuss Russia’s missile system and the countries’ trade deal during their meeting.

Pompeo urges Iraqi PM Mahdi to address protesters’ ‘legitimate grievances’
Staff writer, Al Arabiya English/Tuesday, 12 November 2019
US Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo has in a phone call urged Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul Mahdi to address protesters’ “legitimate grievances,” said State Department spokesman Morgan Ortagus. “Secretary Pompeo emphasized that peaceful public demonstrations are a fundamental element of all democracies and deplored the death toll among the protesters as a result of the Government of Iraq’s crackdown and use of lethal force, as well as the reports of kidnapped protesters. “Secretary Pompeo urged Prime Minister Abddul Mahdi to take immediate steps to address the protesters’ legitimate grievances by enacting reforms and tackling corruption.”According to Ortagus, “Pompeo reaffirmed the United States’ enduring commitment to a strong, sovereign, and prosperous Iraq, as outlined in our bilateral Strategic Framework Agreement.”He also pledged to continue to support the Iraqi security forces in fighting the ISIS, said Ortagus.

Iraq officials must ‘step up’ to enact reforms: UN envoy
AFP, Baghdad/Wednesday, 13 November 2019
Iraqi officials must ramp up their response to mass demonstrations demanding an overhaul of the political system, the United Nations’ representative in Baghdad told AFP in an exclusive interview on Wednesday. Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, who heads the UN’s Iraq mission (UNAMI), said the country’s authorities must “step up to the plate and make things happen.” “They are elected by the people, they are accountable to them,” she said. The UN has put forward a phased roadmap, backed by the country’s top Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, calling for an immediate end to violence, electoral reform and anti-graft measures within two weeks. That would be followed by constitutional amendments and infrastructure legislation within three months. Hennis-Plasschaert discussed the plan with lawmakers on the sidelines of a parliamentary session on Wednesday, telling them: “now is the time to act, otherwise any momentum will be lost - lost at a time when many, many Iraqis demand concrete results.” Protests broke out in Baghdad and the country’s Shia-majority south in early October over rampant corruption, lack of jobs and notoriously poor services. Protesters have escalated their demands to deep-rooted regime change, but political forces have rallied in recent days to prop up the government of Prime Minister Adil Abdel Mahdi. Politicians closed ranks following a series of meetings with top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. Hennis-Plasschaert told AFP on Wednesday she did not seek to be a counter-weight to Iranian influence but said she feared “spoilers” could prevent progress. “This country unfortunately knows many actors, external, internal, that could act as spoilers (and) undermine the legitimate demands of the people,” she said.

US to reevaluate South Sudan ties after unity gov’t deadline passes
Reuters, Washington/Wednesday, 13 November 2019
The United States onWednesday said it was “gravely disappointed” with South Sudan’s failure to form a unity government by a November 12 deadline and would “reevaluate” its relationship with the African nation’s government. “We will work bilaterally and with the international community to take action against all those impeding South Sudan’s peaceprocess,” US State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement. She added that the United States would also seek “to establish a new paradigm to achieve peace and a successful political transition in South Sudan” with others in the region.

ISIS detainees in Syria a ‘ticking time-bomb’: State Dept official
Reuters, Washington/Wednesday, 13 November 2019
Some 10,000 ISIS detainees held in prisons in northeastern Syria present a major security risk, a senior State Department official said on Tuesday, urging countries to take back their citizens who joined the terrorist group and were detained. “It’s a ticking time bomb to simply have the better part of 10,000 detainees, many of them foreign fighters,” the official, told reporters in a conference call. ISIS lost almost all of its territory in Iraq and Syria. Its former leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a US raid last month but it remains a security threat in Syria and beyond. Allies have been worried that ISIS militants could escape as a result of Turkey’s assault against Syrian Kurdish militia fighters who have been holding thousands of the group’s fighters and tens of thousands of their family members. The official said little progress was made on the repatriation of ISIS detainees, with only some taken back by some Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries. “Given that there are hundreds of people being held from Europe, we are very troubled by this and it’s a major issue of diplomatic discussion,” the official said. The United States will hold a meeting of foreign ministers from the US-led coalition fighting ISIS in Washington on Thursday to discuss the next step on how to recalibrate the fight against the extremist hardline group. The issue of how to handle ISIS detainees is likely to take the center stage.
Trump cleared the way for a long-threatened Turkish offensive into northeastern Syria on October 9 against Kurdish forces who had been America’s top allies in the battle against ISIS since 2014. The official said the United States was confident that in the meantime, Syrian Kurdish militia can keep the detainees secure but does not want to take any risks by having a such a large group of militants in one place.

Russia in talks with Damascus for third base in Syria: Reports
Tommy Hilton, Al Arabiya English/Wednesday, 13 November 2019
Moscow and Damascus are in talks over leasing Qamishli Airport in northeastern Syria to the Russian military, according to reports from Russia’s Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper. The move would establish Russia’s third base in the country and cement the Russian presence in northeastern Syria, where Turkey recently launched a military offensive against Kurdish-led forces. According to the Gazeta, a Russian daily newspaper, “If Moscow establishes a presence there, it will allow neither the Americans nor the Turks to enter the city.”Russia currently operates the Hmeimim Air Base southeast of Latakia and a naval port in Tartus, both in the west of Syria. The port in Tartus has been leased to Russia via Stroytransgaz for 49 years, granting Moscow access to a warm water port in the Mediterranean. The new base in Qamishli further establishes Russia’s increasing “dominance as regional power-broker” at the expense of NATO, according to Jessica Leyland, Senior Intelligence Analyst – Middle East and North Africa at AKE International. “Russia has 400km range S-400 air defence system positioned at Hmeimim base and 600km range anti-ship missiles in Tartus. Consolidating these positions with further air power in Qamishli would be enough to deter most military aggression,” Leyland told Al Arabiya English.
Russia has been a key ally of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad throughout the ongoing eight-year war in the country, with close relations between the two countries going back to the era of the Soviet Union. On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reiterated Moscow’s line that the Syrian regime should take control over the country’s entire territory as soon as possible. Due to the outbreak of the war in 2011, northeastern Syria had been administered by a Kurdish-led civilian administration and its affiliated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), while the northwestern province of Idlib remains in the control of opposition groups. Russia already has military police in northern Syria cooperating with the Syrian government forces, but leasing Qamishli “amplifies Russia’s current trajectory of crystallizing its own territorial control, on the premise of support for and legitimized by the al-Assad regime,” explained Leyland. “It re-establishes Bashar al-Assad’s control over Qamishli from which Syrian Kurdish forces have withdrawn [and] fills the security vacuum created, another step to Assad’s ultimate goal to regain the whole of Syrian territory,” she added. Kurdish-led forces withdrew from portions of northeastern Syria in the wake of the Turkish-led offensive, launched in October, following US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw US forces from the region. The US had previously been allied with the Kurdish-led SDF against ISIS.
The Russian presence at Qamishli “cuts off” Kurdish-led forces’ ability to regain territory and puts pressure on US troops stationed near oil wells in northeastern Syria, said Leyland. “The Qamishli base would also preclude the US from attempting to return troops to the region and tacitly threatens their positions around eastern Syria’s oil wells which al-Assad will look to reclaim,” she added. Despite promising to withdraw US forces from the region, President Trump has since said that some US troops will remain to “secure the oil.”Although the Syrian regime is opposed to Turkish control of its territory, the move has also been seen as benefitting Ankara amid cooperation between Turkish and Russian forces. “Given the proximity of Qamishli to the Turkish border and the cordial Turkish-Russian relationship, this base has to have been established with at least the tacit approval of Ankara,” said Leyland. On October 22, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin reached an agreement in Sochi aimed at ensuring the withdrawal of Kurdish-led forces from northern Syria. Turkish and Russian forces have since carried out joint patrols in the area.

Turkey says it captured ‘important’ ISIS figure in Syria
The Associated Press, Ankara/Wednesday, 13 November 2019
The Turkish interior minister says Turkey has captured an “important” figure within ISIS in Syria. Suleyman Soylu said on Wednesday that the suspect is still being interrogated but did not name the figure or provide further details.
Turkey has said it captured and detained several members of the family of the slain ISIS group leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, including one of his wives, his sister and a daughter. Al-Baghdadi blew himself up during an Oct. 26 raid by US Special Forces on his heavily fortified safe house in the Syrian province of Idlib. Turkey has been publicizing its efforts to catch ISIS members, following criticism that its recent military offensive to drive Kurdish-led forces from northeast Syrian would lead to an ISIS resurgence.

Turkey says Germany, Netherlands agree to take back ISIS detainees
Reuters, Ankara/Wednesday, 13 November 2019
Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said on Wednesday that Germany and the Netherlands had agreed to take back German and Dutch ISIS detainees and their families from Turkey, after Ankara started to repatriate the fighters this week. On Monday, Turkey said it had deported two of the detainees, a German and an American, and added that it will deport another 23 European nationals in the coming days. Turkey holds hundreds of ISIS suspects in its jails and says it has captured another 287 during its military offensive in northeast Syria against Kurdish YPG forces - an incursion which has further strained ties with its NATO allies. “We have our own policy and we are implementing it without compromise. Those who want to step out of our way will, but those who don’t will face the consequences,” Soylu said in the southeastern province of Van on Wednesday. “I would like to especially thank two countries here. One is Germany and the other the Netherlands,” he added. “As of last night, they have confirmed that they will take back terrorists from Daesh who are citizens of their countries and their wives, children and all the others,” he said. Turkey has said it will deport the detainees to Ireland, Germany, France and Denmark. French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said on Tuesday that France would take back 11 suspected ISIS members from Turkey. Ireland’s Foreign Minister Simon Coveney also said that two Irish nationals set to be deported from Turkey had the right to return to Ireland. On Monday, Greek police said that Turkish police came to the border post at the Greek town of Kasanies and requested that one of the detainees, a US citizen of Arab descent, be admitted to Greece as he had been arrested for exceeding his stay in Turkey. Greek police said that a check carried out in a database of Greek and cooperating countries did not find anything against him, and that the man has been refused entry to Greece and sent back to Turkey. Turkish state media said on Wednesday he was in the buffer zone between Turkey and Greece. Turkey’s offensive against the YPG, US partners in the battle against ISIS in Syria, prompted concern that the detained ISIS militants could break out and regroup amid the chaos. Washington says that nearly all the 10,000 ISIS suspects held by the SDF in Syria remain in captivity, but a senior US State Department official described them on Tuesday as a “ticking time-bomb” and urged states to take back their citizens.

Turkey police rearrest journalist Ahmet Altan
AFP, Ankara/Wednesday, 13 November 2019
Turkish police acting on a court order rearrested journalist and novelist Ahmet Altan on Tuesday, just a week after his release from prison over alleged links to the failed 2016 coup.Altan and another veteran journalist Nazli Ilicak were released on November 4 despite having been convicted of “helping a terrorist group.”The Istanbul court sentenced Altan to more than 10 years in jail, but ruled that he and Ilicak should be released under supervision after time already served - around three years each. They were also forbidden from leaving the country. But on Tuesday an arrest warrant was issued after the chief public prosecutor appealed against the decision to release Altan, state news agency Anadolu said. Istanbul police said later that officers detained Altan at his home in the district of Kadikoy on the city’s Asian side. Altan has been accused of having links to the outlawed movement of US-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara accuses of ordering the attempted overthrow of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2016. Gulen denies the accusation. For their part, Ahmed Altan and Ilicak have denied any involvement in the failed coup, calling such accusations “grotesque.”Last year both Altan and Ilicak were sentenced to life in prison, but a top appeals court quashed the verdict in July and ordered a retrial on a different charge. Amnesty International’s Europe director, Marie Struthers, lambasted the “scandalous” move in a statement. “It is impossible to see this decision as anything other than further punishment for his determination not to be silenced and it compounds an already shocking catalogue of injustice he has been subjected to,” Struthers said.

New kidnapping case reported as female activists targeted in Iraq
Staff writer, Al Arabiya English/Wednesday, 13 November 2019
Iraqi activist Mary Mohammad, one of the participants in the protests and famous for helping protesters demanding the ousting of the regime has disappeared, according to reports that are circulating on social media.
Iraqi activists who condemned the kidnapping tweeted that Mary Mohammad disappeared four days ago with no trace of her whereabouts. Some of the protesters accused pro-Iranian militias of carrying out operations targeting activists and bloggers taking part in the protests in the provinces of central and southern Iraq. Mohammad is the second female activist who has disappeared since the eruption of protests in early October. On November 2, Iraqi activist and physician Siba al-Mahdawi was abducted in Baghdad by an unknown group at night when she was returning from Tahrir Square. The Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights (IHCHR) called on the government and security forces to investigate the case. Al-Mahdawi’s mother said she had been abducted by “armed, masked men on pick-up trucks.”Last Friday, Amnesty International called on the Iraqi authorities to reveal the fate of al-Mahdawi, saying that her abduction was part of a campaign to silence freedom of expression in Iraq. The fate of the 26 Iraqis who remain kidnapped since the protests began is uncertain. Three activists were killed in Basra and Baghdad, and about 400 activists, protesters, and bloggers are in detention in the south and center of the country, according to Iraqi security sources. The protesters initially demanded better public services, job creation and anti-corruption before they raised their demands to topple the government after the army and security forces used excessive violence against them. The government has acknowledged this and promised to hold those responsible to account.

UN: Al-Shabab remains ‘potent threat’ in Somalia and region
The Associated Press, United Nations/Wednesday, 13 November 2019
UN experts say al-Shabab extremists in Somalia remain “a potent threat” to regional peace and are manufacturing home-made explosives, expanding their revenue sources and infiltrating government institutions. The panel of experts report to the Security Council, circulated on Tuesday, says a significant escalation of US airstrikes targeting al-Shabab militants and leaders has kept the group “off-balance” but has had “little effect on its ability to launch regular asymmetric attacks throughout Somalia.” The panel also reports on the arrest last December 17 of a Somali national linked to the ISIS extremist group in Bari, Italy, in connection with a planned attack on the Vatican and other targets to coincide with Christmas celebrations. The experts say that “the plot was rudimentary and had little chance of success.”

Islamist-Inspired Party Leader Elected Tunisia House Speaker
Agence France Presse/Wednesday, 13 November 2019
The leader of Tunisia's Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party, Rached Ghannouchi, was elected parliament speaker on Wednesday, a month after it came top in legislative polls. Ghannouchi secured the post with 123 votes from 217 votes cast in parliament, following an agreement with the liberal Qalb Tounes party headed by controversial businessman Nabil Karoui, sources in both parties told AFP. Karoui, who was defeated in the second round of October's presidential election, posed as a bulwark against Islamism during his campaign. His party had previously vehemently ruled out any agreement with Ennahdha.
Ghannouchi, 78, has led Ennahdha since it was founded almost 40 years ago, carrying the movement to victory in a 2011 election, just months after the party resurfaced from underground following the revolution that ousted autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. A veteran opposition leader under Ben Ali and former President Habib Bourguiba, Ghannouchi had never run for office but won a parliamentary seat in Tunis in the October 6 parliamentary vote. Ennahdha won 52 seats in those polls -- short of the 109 needed to govern alone -- and has been holding negotiations with other political groups to form a coalition government. The legislative vote was held between the first and second round of Tunisia's presidential election, which was won by political outsider and conservative academic Kais Saied. Ennahdha also wants one of its own figures to head the government in the North African country and the party has until Friday to announce its candidate for the premiership.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on November 13-14/2019
The U.S.-Israel Military Partnership Should Remain Outside Presidential Politics
Jacob Nagel/FDD/November 13/2019
The risks are rising that U.S. military assistance to Israel will become an important issue in the Democratic presidential primaries. On October 19, Senator Elizabeth Warren suggested that aid should be “on the table” if Israeli actions in the West Bank, including settlement expansion, hindered a two-state solution. Mayor Pete Buttigieg has also spoken in favor of conditioning U.S. assistance on Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. A third leading contender, Bernie Sanders, has been on record for years advocating that aid be weaponized to compel changes in Israeli behavior.
Once just a fringe view among Democratic leaders, Sanders’ position has been gaining wider traction. . . Speaking on October 28 to J Street (a progressive Jewish group), Sanders doubled down on his hard line: “I would use the leverage,” Sanders said. “$3.8 billion [the annual amount of U.S. defense support to Israel] is a lot of money. We cannot give it carte blanche to the Israeli government . . . We have the right to demand respect for human rights and democracy.”
Whether or not this constitutes smart politics, it’s almost certainly bad policy. Linking U.S. military support for Israel to the decades-old Palestinian conflict would reverse the well-considered approach of the last Democratic president, Barack Obama, who made a conscious decision to separate the strategic benefits of the U.S.-Israel alliance from the intractable peace process. More importantly, it would ignore the pressing realities that currently confront American national security – in particular, the U.S. need to devote greater resources to countering China and Russia at the same time threats to its interests in the Middle East remain extremely challenging. In that environment, Israel’s value as one of America’s closest allies and the region’s preeminent military and intelligence power is only likely to grow.
The current agreement governing U.S. military assistance to Israel is a Memorandum of Understanding or MOU that the two countries signed in September 2016 – just months before President Obama left office. The MOU resulted from a long negotiation that lasted more than three years. The agreement has a 10-year term that runs from 2019 to 2028 and increased overall U.S. defense support for Israel to $38 billion, or $3.8 billion per year. Of that total, $33 billion will be in the form of Foreign Military Financing – an increase from approximately $30 billion under the previous MOU. Another $5 billion, or $500 million annually, will be dedicated to supporting Israel’s ballistic missile defense efforts, or BMD – an increase from an average of about $400 million per year in the previous decade, which was not in the form of a multi-year commitment.
The negotiations on the current MOU commenced in March 2013 during Obama’s first visit to Israel as president. Despite the well-known tensions and disagreements that marred relations between Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, both leaders stressed the importance of a new agreement that would serve their countries’ vital interests and further consolidate the special bond and strategic partnership between them.
The talks weren’t always smooth. They went through a particularly difficult period as the U.S. effort to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran accelerated in 2015 – even stopping completely after Netanyahu delivered his speech to Congress opposing the deal in March of that year. But once the nuclear accord was finalized four months later, Obama quickly resumed the MOU negotiations. To his credit, he understood that legitimate policy difference over how best to deal with Iran or with the Palestinians should not be allowed to undermine the larger bilateral relationship. For his part, PM Netanyahu felt the same way, wanting to preserve bipartisan American support for Israel’s security while ensuring that the Israel Defense Forces received the necessary resources to implement its long-range plans.
Importantly, contrary to some rumors and leaks, at no point during the talks did the U.S. team ever attempt to use military assistance as leverage to reduce Israel’s objections to the nuclear deal or to change its approach to the Palestinian conflict. The issues were simply not on the table. Both sides appreciated the significant benefits that they gained from deepening their strategic ties and didn’t want to hold them hostage to their disagreements over any specific policy issue. Indeed, in private, the U.S. and Israeli lead negotiators actually agreed to “rules of the game” for their talks – with the main rule being that neither the Iran issue nor the Palestinian question would be part of their discussions, or put forward as a condition for completing the MOU.
Before the agreement was signed, the two sides identified the different ways that the MOU served each country’s broader national interests. The agreed-upon list set out the following important benefits:
For the U.S., it demonstrates a long-term commitment to Israel’s security; implements U.S. legislation to maintain Israel’s qualitative military edge, or QME; ensures Israel can provide for its own security without the need for U.S. intervention; strengthens Israel as a bulwark against radical Islamism; strengthens Israel as an effective guarantor of Jordanian security; enables the U.S. to sell advanced arms to key Arab states, while upholding QME; and promotes joint research and development cooperation benefiting the U.S. military.
For Israel, it ensures Israel can defend itself, by itself; ensures Israel’s qualitative edge over all potential enemies; strengthens Israel’s deterrent power by enhancing its defensive and offensive capabilities; improves Israel’s defense planning by providing budget predictability; deepens the U.S.-Israel strategic alliance; and provides Israel a greater security margin to take risks for peace with Arab neighbors.
The significant technological benefits that the U.S. military has secured from its cooperation with Israel are especially worth highlighting. Israeli breakthroughs are rapidly finding their way into the U.S. national security arsenal and helping to protect American lives, including in areas as diverse as ballistic missile defense, cybersecurity, tunnel detection, drones, space and counter-terrorism technologies.
The importance of Israel’s military and intelligence prowess will likely only grow in the coming years as U.S. defense priorities shift toward resurgent great-power competition against both China and Russia. The United States will increasingly have to look to its local partners to take on a greater burden in combatting rising threats from the Middle East. Whether combatting Iran’s precision missile project in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq or Islamist terrorism, no country has a greater capability (or will) to help protect U.S. interests than Israel.
The signing of the agreement was a major achievement that allowed Israel to preserve its strategic alliance and cooperation with the United States, emphasized America’s long-term commitment to Israel’s security, and provided the IDF and Israel’s Ballistic Missile Defense Agency the necessary resources required for long-term planning and the early purchase of vital military platforms.
It should be clear that avoiding the politicization of the U.S.-Israel strategic alliance and military partnership has served the national security interests of both countries extremely well. President Obama understood that, as did his Democratic and Republican predecessors. It has been a truly bipartisan achievement, and every effort should be made to keep it that way.
*BG and Professor Jacob Nagel is a former head of Israel’s National Security Council and National Security Advisor (Acting) to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, headed the Israeli team that negotiated the 2016 U.S.-Israel MOU. He is a visiting professor at the Technion, and a visiting fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Erdogan to visit White House after welcoming Iranian terrorist to Turkey
Toby Dershowitz/FDD/November 13/2019
President Donald Trump will host Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the White House tomorrow; the timing of Erdogan’s visit is awkward because his government just hosted an Iranian official implicated in a major terrorist attack. In the absence of concerted pressure from the United States, Erdogan has deepened his ties to a wide range of terrorists and extremists. In July 1994, Hezbollah operatives directed by senior Iranian officials bombed the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, killing 85 and injuring hundreds more. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentine history. Hadi Soleimanpour was Iran’s ambassador to Argentina at the time of the bombing and has an Argentine warrant out for his arrest.
On Saturday, Soleimanpour appeared in Antalya, Turkey, along with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu for the annual meeting of the Economic Cooperation Organization, a regional development body.
Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who led the AMIA investigation until his murder in 2015, provided evidence in an indictment that Soleimanpour oversaw the intelligence activities in Iran’s embassy in Buenos Aires that facilitated the bombing.
The Nisman indictment showed that Soleimanpour had a long record of involvement in terrorism. He was previously a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and while serving as Tehran’s ambassador to Spain from 1985–1989, he reportedly oversaw a sleeper cell there and maintained contact with Hezbollah activists. This reportedly led him to be “invited to leave” the country.
While the Shah was in power, Soleimanpour reportedly planted a bomb at an Iranian university. In addition, Soleimanpour was reportedly involved in the illegal procurement of military equipment of U.S. origin.
The U.S. government has worked closely with the administration of outgoing Argentine President Mauricio Macri to address Iranian-backed terrorism and illicit finance in the Western Hemisphere. In July, Argentina added Hezbollah to its new terrorism list along with several financiers believed to have played a role in the AMIA bombing.
Speaking to Latin American counterterrorism officials and AMIA family members in July, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, “The U.S. [is] recommitting to the cause of justice for those killed in the AMIA bombing, and I mean it.”
On November 4, the United States designated Ali Akbar Velayati, Iran’s foreign minister at the time of the attack. The ideological mastermind of the AMIA bombing, he too has an outstanding arrest warrant. Velayati is currently an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader and “helped the Iranian regime extend credit lines to the brutal Assad regime,” according to the U.S. Treasury Department.
Turkey’s activities antithetical to U.S. interests go beyond hosting Soleimanpour. Erdogan provided refuge and hospitality to violent jihadists, including Saleh al-Arouri, the West Bank commander of Hamas’s Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, who boasted about the kidnapping and slaying of three Israeli teens. Erdogan has also bankrolled affiliates of al-Qaeda. In Syria, Turkey-backed militias have committed atrocities against America’s Kurdish allies as well as against ethnic and religious minorities.
Senior Turkish officials, reportedly with Erdogan’s knowledge, were complicit in multi-billion money laundering schemes designed to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran. Erdogan also utilizes “hostage diplomacy,” taking innocent American pastors, journalists, and diplomats as hostages to extort concessions from the United States.
While President Trump has a warm relationship with Erdogan, Erdogan’s toxicity may not be Teflon-coated – as evidenced by the recent across-the-board condemnation of the Turkish president by Trump supporters in Congress, leading evangelicals, and supporters of Trump’s tough Iran policy. A red carpet for Erdogan is unjustified until he ceases Turkey’s malign activities rather than covering them up.
*Toby Dershowitz is senior vice president for government relations and strategy at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where she also contributes to FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP) and Center on Economic and Financial Power (CEFP). To receive more of Toby’s policy briefs, op-eds, and research, subscribe HERE. For more from CMPP and CEFP, subscribe HERE. Follow Toby on Twitter @TobyDersh. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_CMPP and @FDD_CEFP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, non-partisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

Stars not yet aligned for meaningful change in Iraq
Sir John Jenkins/Arab News/November 13/2019
It’s time to talk Iraq again, I’m afraid. The protests that began in early October and paused for the great commemoration of the Arbaeen have only redoubled since then throughout the majority-Shiite parts of the country, with their symbolic epicenter in Tahrir Square in the heart of the capital, Baghdad.
There has been further massive violence perpetrated by the Iraqi security forces (ISF) and their partners from some of the main Iran-linked militias of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU). In a new tactic, they have been using tear gas canisters aimed at heads as lethal weapons (with brutally graphic consequences, judging by scores of clips posted on social media). As a result, the death count is in the hundreds, with thousands wounded. The relatives of those killed are reportedly being pressed to sign statements that their loved ones were killed accidentally. Snipers have been targeting doctors as they treat the injured. Together with journalists and lawyers, many have received death threats. Unsurprisingly, some have fled the city. Over the weekend, the ISF sought to clear Baghdad’s squares and bridges by force, burning some of the protest camps erected there, as well as in Najaf and other parts of the south. The ISF has been arresting those posting on social media in support of the uprising. There have been repeated internet suspensions.
It hasn’t worked so far. About 60 percent of Iraq’s population is under the age of 24. They have no real memory of the agonies of the Saddam Hussein years, though they will have grown up with expectations of a new Iraq in the making, especially after the defeat of Daesh around Mosul. But this hasn’t happened. Instead, the sectarian division of power that the US promoted after 2003 — and Najaf subsequently backed — remains in place. As in Lebanon, it has created a corrupt, self-replicating elite. Again as in Lebanon — for obvious demographic and political reasons — this elite is largely Shiite, with complex ties to Iran. They and Iran benefit by being able to rig the electoral system and loot resources to the detriment of the public interest.
Iraq is energy-rich. There are now some 3 million people on the public payroll, but productivity is dismal as most of these jobs are the result of patronage. Youth unemployment has reached nearly 30 percent. Basra is run by criminal rackets and national infrastructure remains a disgrace. In all the talk over the last year or so of the removal of T-walls from the Green Zone, the opening of bridges, the revival of Mutanabbi Street and new life in the cafes of Baghdad, what has really changed structurally? In the circumstances, is it any wonder that Iraq’s Generation Z and Millennials feel so fed up that they will risk their lives to change the system?
The problem is how they actually do this. Over the last month-and-a-half, their demands have ranged from the provision of jobs and housing, the resignation of the entire government, a new, more representative and accountable political system, and investigations into corruption and violence. Religious leaders across Iraq have expressed support for their protests. The Prime Minister and Commander-in-Chief Adel Abdul Mahdi, who owes his position to a deal struck between two of the major Shiite blocs with Iranian mediation, has alternated between dismay, expressing ignorance of the ISF’s rules of engagement (ROE for policing demonstrations? A commander-in-chief who doesn’t have a clue?), blustering threats, unrealistic promises of massive new spending (which Iraq can’t afford because the money has been stolen) and attempts to show that he’s down with the kids. There was a priceless moment a week or so ago, when he announced that he understood the anger on the streets because he himself had demonstrated in Baghdad in 1956 against the Tripartite Aggression at Suez. That’s ancient history to anyone on the streets. And, in any case, he was a Baathist back then.
As in Lebanon again, the protesters want no compromise or empty promises from people they don’t trust. The anti-Hezbollah slogan of those in Beirut — “kellun yaani kellun” (everyone means everyone) — applies in Baghdad too.
But, for a popular protest movement to succeed, you need to find a way to make the protests politically meaningful. And, for this to happen, you have to control at least some of the levers of power. In this case, those levers are in the hands of the protesters’ enemies, who have every incentive to maintain their grip. And behind the main Iraqi actors in all this stands Iran. The demonstrators clearly know this. That’s why they have resurrected patriotic Iraqi songs from the 1980s, chanted so many anti-Iran slogans, posted clips of themselves beating images of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Qassem Soleimani with their shoes, and targeted the Iranian consulate in Karbala.
But Iran has much experience in dealing with this sort of thing. After all, there have been repeated mass protests in Iran over the last 20 years, all of which have been suppressed by massive and lethal force delivered through the Islamic Republic’s own ideological militias, the Basij and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). These groups provided the template for the Lebanese Hezbollah, Badr, Kata’ib Hezbollah, Asa’ib Ahl Al-Haq (AaH) and the rest of the Iran-aligned PMU. Khamenei himself has pointedly commended the “special mission” of the Iranian armed forces in countering domestic sedition.
And listen to other things that these people are saying. Khamenei, senior IRGC commanders and IRGC-linked officials have repeatedly claimed that the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel are behind the demonstrations and that their demands can only be met through existing legal structures (as if any of them care about legality or that meant anything anyway in the state of lawlessness that Iraq was allowed to become under Nouri Al-Maliki and his complicit Chief Justice Midhat Al-Mahmoud). They have compared what is happening in Iraq with the prelude to the civil war in Yemen and accused the US and Saudi Arabia of engaging in “political terrorism.” Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon has echoed this. Inside Iraq, AaH’s Qais Al-Khazali and the PMU’s Falih Al-Fayadh in particular have repeatedly used the same talking points. At one point, Al-Khazali even shamelessly suggested that the snipers doing such lethal damage to ordinary Iraqis actually belonged to the notorious US security company Blackwater. Other IRGC figures have warned of conspiracies against the broader “axis of resistance” and claimed that “the hands of the elements of the Baath regime and Shiite movements dependent on the American Embassy are completely visible in recent demonstrations and gatherings in Iraq.”
This is Joseph Goebbels’ “big lie” with a Persian accent. Perhaps most ominously, Khamenei has also commented on Iran’s own experience with political protests: “The enemies had similar designs for dear Iran, but luckily the vigilant nation entered the arena in time. The armed forces, too, were prepared and the conspiracy was neutralized.”
Meanwhile, Soleimani has been performing his secret ministry with his usual sinister efficiency, successfully pressing Hadi Al-Amiri not to make common cause with Muqtada Al-Sadr in demanding the resignation of Abdul Mahdi, making Al-Sadr himself back down (and maybe return to Iran), and seeking to persuade Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani to moderate his criticisms of the government and support for the demonstrators. Al-Sistani alone has resisted this pressure. But it is not clear what direct influence he can now bring to bear on his own in the face of such single-minded intent from Tehran. In the end, Iraq is the single most important arena for the exercise and resourcing of Iran’s hegemonic ambitions in the region. Neither Khamenei nor Soleimani will surrender it easily. And, unless someone forces them to do so, why would they?
In any case, no one is doing so. The system in Iraq that is under attack from angry young demonstrators is one that Iran and its allies built, but in which the US and its allies — as well as Najaf — were complicit. The US has issued only a statement of support for the demonstrators. But, against this, Al-Fayadh was received warmly in Washington in early October, and there have been other statements supporting a continuation of Iraqi politics as usual. The Western press is covering events only patchily and every statement from Washington — or indeed from the UN, which has genuinely sought to be constructive — is willfully interpreted as part of the satanic conspiracy against Shiite Islamist virtue.
My guess is that the government, with Iranian backing, intends to sit these troubles out, offering meaningless concessions from time to time, speaking the language of compromise and understanding, but using coercion and lethal force where necessary. After all, this has been the pattern in Iran and elsewhere in the region for two decades. And it works.
Or it has done so far. But the discontents that have given rise to these events in Iraq — and indeed in Lebanon, Sudan and Algeria — have not vanished and will not do so. They are consistent with those that drove the first wave of unrest in 2011. The main difference lies in the underlying economic conditions. Eight years ago, oil prices were at a peak and regional economies growing at their fastest pace in decades. Since 2014, oil prices have collapsed while population growth has continued and the economic situation has become more difficult. Growth has slowed, public debt has risen, environmental degradation has increased and unemployment is higher. Ruling regimes now have fewer resources to finance their clientelism. That applies to Iran and Iraq as much as it applies anywhere else.
The second generation of demonstrators has also learned lessons from the first: They see the enemy not as a single ruler but as a system; a deep state that holds in thrall the superstructures of Potemkin democracy. They see the dangers of sectarian and other identity divisions: A trap their opponents have set for them but they have so far avoided.
I still don’t think we are anywhere near a proper, peaceful transition to something better. That depends, at least in part, on those on the street who want change organizing themselves properly, showing great discipline over a sustained period, developing realistic programs of change, and attracting effective support from the population as a whole and from the international community. That won’t happen as long as those who have power prevent exactly that happening. And, internationally, the stars are out of alignment. But the aspiration, the fierce desire for something better, will not disappear.
Is it any wonder that Iraq’s Generation Z and Millennials feel so fed up that they will risk their lives to change the system?
Meanwhile, Iran’s project in the region has been exposed for what it is: A form of the very neocolonialism it claims to stand against. When President Hassan Rouhani makes a big thing out of overtures he claims to have made to his Arab neighbors; Nasrallah makes conciliatory gestures to Lebanese Shiite protesting about Hezbollah’s own involvement in corruption; some journalists at Al-Akhbar in Beirut resign because they can no longer sustain the lies; and Iraqi and Lebanese Shiites make common cause with their fellow citizens against political systems made in Tehran, you suspect that the tide may be turning. If it is, it will be a slow and painful process, as it was in Eastern Europe from the first stirrings of dissent in Berlin and Budapest in the 1950s to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. But at least — after Syria and now Iraq and Lebanon — the mask is off.
There are many in the West who still make excuses for the Islamic Republic, even as it takes more hostages, commits more acts of violence and helps suppress more dissent. Like those who thought the Soviet Union was Tolstoy, Pushkin, Chekhov, Prokofiev, Stravinsky and Les Ballets Russes, they think Iran is the Shahnameh, the wondrous architecture and art of Mashhad and Tabriz, the tobacco concession and other imperialist impositions of the late 19th century, the aborted Constitutional Revolution of the early 20th century, the 1953 counter-coup against Mohammed Mossadegh and the rest of the distorted martyrology that forms one particular version of Iranian history.
Others just think Iran is an ally in the global anti-imperialist popular front. But Iran is an imperial project itself — and not just of the mind. I hope these people will learn to distinguish between fact and fiction, between a people and its government, between a culture and the politics that are imposed upon it. If Iran wants to be accepted as a normal country and a good neighbor, it should probably start behaving like one.
*Sir John Jenkins is a senior fellow at Policy Exchange. Until December 2017, he was Corresponding Director (Middle East) at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), based in Manama, Bahrain and was a Senior Fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. He was the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia until January 2015.

Erdogan should think twice before ditching US
Chris Doyle/Arab News/November 13/2019
For centuries, European and then American policy has been to keep Turkey and Russia separate and even hostile to one another. Wars were fought for this purpose as far back as the 17th century; then later the Crimean War and the feeding frenzy over the remnants of the Ottoman Empire following the First World War. But is this all about to change, as Europe and the US watch from the sidelines as Turkey and Russia draw ever closer?
Vladimir Putin no doubt surveys the current scene from his Sochi dacha with a sense of calm satisfaction. Over the last four years, the situation on Russia’s southwestern front has become so promising for Putin that even he might admit, albeit in private, that matters could hardly have transpired better.
The lynchpin in this new alignment is the revived Russia-Turkey axis, cemented by Putin’s personal relationship with his counterpart in Ankara, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He too may be quietly smiling from his new 1,000-room palace on the edge of Turkey’s capital.
Things looked so much different almost exactly four years ago. With tensions already high over Syria, where the two leaders backed differing sides, a Turkish F-16 shot down a Russian Su-24 somewhere over the Turkish-Syrian border. Putin’s fiery reaction hardly appeared to be the harbinger of friendship; more a possible declaration of war. The S-400, Russia’s most formidable anti-aircraft missile system, was deployed at the Russian airbase in Syria at Hmeimim. Putin swiftly moved to restrict Turkish imports.
Yet war did not follow and Putin played his hand adroitly. Erdogan patched up the relationship as he knew he had to, but also realized that actually the two leaders had certain common agendas. The Astana process was where this reached fruition. Russia, Turkey and Iran devised a mechanism that excluded the US and EU powers, and permitted them, as the countries with military might on the ground, to carve up Syria according to their interests alone. Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria in October ended with another deal with Russia that includes joint military patrols close to the border. Turkey got Russian agreement on restricting the powers of Kurdish armed groups in Syria, while Moscow engineered the return of Syrian government “control” to the third of the country once controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces. The US ended up with close to zero. The Kurdish groups felt betrayed, but could not counter the powerful Russian-Turkish alliance without Washington’s backing.
Erdogan could be pushed even closer to Putin as a result of tensions with the EU. The latter has instigated sanctions against Turkey as a result of it drilling off the coast of EU member Cyprus. The Turkish president has responded with a chilling threat: Claiming that he will release or attempt to repatriate about 1,200 Daesh prisoners into the EU. Already attempts are being made to fly seven German nationals back there and to deport a mix of Irish, French and Danish nationals. This is clearly to demonstrate that this could be the thin edge of a very dangerous wedge. “These gates will open and these (Daesh) members who have started to be sent to you will continue to be sent. Then you can take care of your own problem,” he said. The farce was best summarized when a former Daesh fighter was deported by Turkey and left in limbo in the buffer zone between the Turkish and Greek borders. Both countries refuse to accept him.
Erdogan’s increasing dissatisfaction with Europe and his on-off relationship with the Trump White House can only benefit Russia
The hypocrisy is rank. Turkey turned a blind eye to extremist fighters crossing its borders into Syria for years — people who either joined Daesh or groups close to Al-Qaeda. Only when Daesh turned on Turkey in 2015 did the policy change and the border sealed. As long as the threat was not inside Turkey itself, Erdogan was content to play fast and loose with Islamist extremism. Some point fingers at Turkey, asking how come Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was killed only 5 kilometers from the Turkish border and if it was possible that, with all the Turkish assets inside Idlib, the authorities were not aware of his whereabouts. Evidence is circumstantial but the rumor mill is in full swing.
Erdogan may be up to his old tricks again regarding Daesh fighters, but he has a strong point. The EU should be taking back their nationals and sharing the burden not just of Daesh fighters, but also of hosting Syrian refugees. But weaponizing either these extremists or refugees for political gain is not the actions of a true statesman.
Putin’s vision is slowly coming true. Erdogan’s increasing dissatisfaction with Europe and his on-off relationship with the Trump White House can only benefit Russia. Who knows, Putin might even step in to broker some truce between these disputing parties in the months ahead? But he also sees his Turkish partner willfully modeling his rule on the Kremlin, becoming increasingly as autocratic as Putin himself.
This is a historic achievement. For centuries, Russia has craved influence over Turkey owing to its strategic position and its access to the warm waters of the Mediterranean. Putin has pushed this agenda for ages; in 2004 he became the first Russian president to visit Turkey since 1972. His quest is nearly complete.
Uncoupling Turkey from NATO and into a military alliance with Russia would be Putin’s crowning glory. Turkey boasts NATO’s second-largest armed forces. Already, by agreeing to purchase Russia’s S-400, Turkey faces censure and US sanctions if it does not “get rid” of the system. It has been ejected from the F-35 fighter program. President Donald Trump seems to believe that threats and sanctions will be enough to keep Turkey in line, but this is far from certain.
Middle East powers should be wary. As flaky as the Trump White House is, this will not always be the case. Both Putin and Erdogan see the region through the narrow lens of personal empowerment and self-interest. Putin is more than capable of ruthlessly discarding Assad in Syria for a Russian-backed alternative if it suits him. Erdogan could turn on any party that does not support his antipathy to Kurdish rights and ambitions. Moreover, neither Russia nor Turkey bring the heavy financial backing and investment that the US and China can. If a day comes when Turkey has to stop playing the two superpowers off against each other and make a choice, it should think twice before ditching the US.
• Chris Doyle is director of the London-based Council for Arab-British Understanding. Twitter: @Doylech