English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For September 28/2020
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Bible Quotations For today
I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 10/16-25/:”‘See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of them, for they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues; and you will be dragged before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them and the Gentiles. When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you at that time; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next; for truly I tell you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes. ‘A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household!”
 

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on September 27-28/2020

French President Emmanuel Macron accuses Lebanese leaders of 'treason'
Macron Slams Shiite Duo, Criticizes Hariri, Urges Govt. in 4-6 Weeks
Macron: Hezbollah and Amal Movement refused to make concessions, France will not abandon the friendly Lebanese people, road map will continue
France’s Macron accuses Lebanon leaders of betrayal over government failure
Aoun Vows to Remain 'Bulwark' to Honor Presidential Oath
Attack on Army in Araman Kills 2 after Fierce Wadi Khaled Battle
Parliamentary Consultations to Name New PM Not Imminent
Hariri Says Not Running for PM, Vows to Facilitate French Initiative
UNIFIL Deploys to Beirut to Assist Army in Aftermath of Port Blast
Lebanon Reels after Efforts to Form Government Collapse
Israel Says Will Hold U.S.-Mediated Talks with Lebanon on Sea Border
Multiple dangers’: Lebanon’s top Christian cleric warns of crisis without a government
Former Lebanese FM, president's son-in-law, has coronavirus
Lebanon Reels After Efforts to Form Government Collapse
Lebanese Security Forces Kill 2 Members of Armed Group
Lebanon Army Tracks Down ISIS-Linked Terrorists After Deadly Attack
Has Hezbollah defeated France in Lebanon?/Seth J.Frantzman/Jerusalem Post/September 27/2020
How Hezbollah destroyed everything that made Lebanon great/Baria Alamuddin/Arab News/September 27/ 2020

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on September 27-28/2020

Assad sends out feelers for peace deal with Israel – repor
Will the Syrian-Israeli Negotiations Resume?
After escaping prison in Iran, persecuted Christian leader speaks out
Years After Second Uprising Palestinians Still Face Bleak Future
Jordan’s monarch dissolves parliament in preparation for November election
Egypt’s El-Sisi warns of instability after protest calls
Armenia says it is checking report of Syrian fighters in Azerbaijan
Armenia declares martial law and mobilization amid Azerbaijan clashes
Erdogan Vows Support to Baku against Armenia as West, Russia Urge Ceasefire
US President Donald Trump demands Biden take drug test before or after debate
US Secretary Pompeo heads for Greece seeking ‘de-escalation’ in Eastern Mediterranean

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on September 27-28/2020

France: More Terrorism, More Silence/Giulio Meotti/Gatestone Institute/September 27, 2020
The Changed Meaning of the Palestinian Cause: Why The Astonishment?/Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al Awsat/September 27/2020
Trump and Biden Make Too Big a Deal of TikTok/Stephen Carter/Bloomberg/September 27/2020
Amy Coney Barrett Deserves to Be on the Supreme Court/Noah Feldman/Bloomberg/September 27/2020
America is Going to Choke Huawei/Chris Miller/The New York Times/September 27/2020
Urban Forests for a Moderate Climate/Najib Saab/Asharq Al Awsat/September 27/2020
Palestinians must first make peace with themselves/Yossi Mekelberg/Arab News/September 27/ 2020
Why climate change is back on the agenda/Cornelia Meyer/Arab News/September 27/ 2020
Birth pains of our new multipolar world/Hafed Al-Ghwell/Arab News/September 27/ 2020
Pushing Back on Iraqi Militias: Weighing U.S. Options/Michael Knights/The Washington Institute/September 25/2020

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on September 27-28/2020

French President Emmanuel Macron accuses Lebanese leaders of 'treason'
Sunniva Rose/The National/Septembter 27/2020
Hezbollah cannot operate as 'an army against Israel, a militia in Syria and a respectable party in Lebanon', Macron says
French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday accused Hezbollah of sabotaging the formation of a reformist government to encourage international assistance into the crisis-stricken country.
Mr Macron accused all Lebanese political parties of “collective betrayal” by failing to form a government within 15 days on September 1 despite their promises. But he singled out Hezbollah for blocking political negotiations by insisting that its ally, the Amal Movement, keep control of the Finance Ministry, which it has held since 2014.“They made no concessions,” Mr Macron said from the Elysee Palace on Sunday evening. “Hezbollah cannot operate at the same time as an army against Israel, a militia unleashed against civilians in Syria and a respectable political party in Lebanon.
"It must not believe that it is stronger than it is. It must show that it respects all Lebanese. These last days, it clearly demonstrated the opposite."
His comments contrasted with his more conciliatory tone during two visits to Lebanon after the August 4 explosion at Beirut port, which killed at least 190 people and deepened the country’s political and economic crises.
Less than a week later, Prime Minister Hassan Diab resigned. His successor Mustapha Adib, nominated a day before Mr Macron’s September 1 visit to Lebanon, stepped down on Saturday after nearly a month of political infighting. Iran-backed Hezbollah, Lebanon’s only armed political group, operates as a normal party nationally but is also engaged in regional conflicts. It has been designated a terrorist organisation by countries including the US.
France and the EU separate Hezbollah’s military wing, which they consider to be a terrorist organisation, and its political branch. Mr Macron met Mohammad Raad, the head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, during his two visits to Beirut on August 6 and September 1, as well as seven other representatives of Lebanon’s main political parties. This was the first time that a French president met a Hezbollah member since the party’s creation in 1982.
France considers Lebanon, a former French protectorate with a large francophone population, a strategic regional ally and has organised donor conferences in past decades to help support its economy. Mr Macron said on Sunday night that former prime minister Saad Hariri recently made concessions by retracting his initial request to nominate ministers from his religious group.
Mr Hariri is the head of Lebanon’s Sunni Muslim community and resigned on October 29 after nationwide protests caused by the country's economic crisis. But Amal, whose president Nabih Berri is parliamentary Speaker, and Hezbollah did not provide concessions similar to Mr Hariri's, Mr Macron said.
Lebanon’s prime minister is traditionally always a Sunni, the president a Maronite Christian, and the parliamentary speaker a Shiite to respect the country’s delicate sectarian balance. “Today, the question is really in the hands of Berri and Hezbollah: 'Do you want the worst-case scenario or do you want to engage the Shiite camp towards democracy, in the interest of Lebanon?'” Mr Macron said. He said Lebanon was at risk of a new civil war. Mr Macron said that he would wait “four to six weeks” to better understand the goals of Hezbollah and Amal.
“I do not share their ideologies or their ideas, but they are present. I did not put them in power,” he said. “It’s in part Lebanese women and men who voted for them; some out of fear, and some out of conviction. “I am not naive. I am just saying that before reaching conclusions that have profound consequences, it is good to go to the end of the first track." Mr Macron said he would look at “concerted sanctions” against Lebanese leaders if needed. “What are the other options?” he asked. “Can we set up a government with the Shiites? "This is an option that could have been considered but it is not realistic, because today Lebanese leaders are afraid of Hezbollah.”Mr Macron said the US decision on September 8 to blacklist two former transport ministers with close ties to Hezbollah made negotiations with the group more difficult.
But he shied away from accusing Iran of interfering in the Lebanese political process, saying he had “no proof”. Mr Macron said he believed that despite Mr Adib’s resignation, Lebanese politicians should try again to form an independent government to implement rapid reforms and save the country’s economy.
“President [Michel] Aoun has the responsibility in the next few hours to pick up the initiative again and I hope, with all political forces, to succeed in nominating this government,” he said. Mr Macron said he had resisted calls from some Middle East countries to “let Lebanon collapse with Hezbollah".
“I think this would be irresponsible because we have already lived through civil wars in Lebanon and nobody knows when it could end, and because we must not ask Lebanese women and men to pay the price for such policies.
“We are entering a phase where risks are much higher for Lebanon, as they are for the region. “I address here tonight my deep friendship to Lebanese women and men."We think of you all the time. We will be there for you and we will never, never let you go."
 

Macron Slams Shiite Duo, Criticizes Hariri, Urges Govt. in 4-6 Weeks
Naharnet/Sunday 27 September 2020
French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday blasted Hizbullah and Amal Movement, criticized ex-PM Saad Hariri’s conduct in the cabinet formation negotiations and said Lebanese parties now have four to six weeks to form a new government or face “a different approach.”At a rare news conference devoted to Lebanon, Macron accused Lebanon's leaders of betraying their promises over the failure to form a government in the wake of the giant blast at the Beirut port in August. Macron said the political elite had decided "to betray" their obligations and had committed "collective treason" by failing to form a government.
Macron had repeatedly pressed Lebanon's leaders to form the government, saying a reform-minded cabinet was essential if aid was to flow in to rebuild the country. Lebanon's premier-designate Mustafa Adib stepped down on Saturday, saying he had been unable to form a reform-minded government. "They have decided to betray this commitment (to form a government)," Macron told reporters, declaring he was "ashamed" of the country's leaders. "I see that the Lebanese authorities and political forces chose to favor their partisan and individual interests to the detriment of the general interest of the the country," he added. Macron said none of the leaders of Lebanon -- where in the wake of the 1975-1990 civil war power is traditionally shared between Shiites, Sunnis and Christians -- had been up to the task.
"All of them bet on the worst case scenario for the sake of saving themselves, the interests of their family or their clan," he seethed. "I therefore have decided to take note of this collective betrayal and the refusal of Lebanese officials to engage in good faith." Macron also sent a pointed warning to Hizbullah, which was well represented in the outgoing government and some analysts accuse of holding up the process. Hizbullah should "not think it is more powerful than it is... It must show that it respects all the Lebanese. And in recent days days, it has clearly shown the opposite," said Macron.
"Hizbullah cannot be an army in a war against Israel and a militia taking part in Syria's war and still be a respectable party in Lebanon," he said. "Amal and Hizbullah decided that nothing should change in Lebanon and I understood that Hizbullah did not honor the pledge it made to me. The failure is their failure and I don't bear its responsibility," Macron added. The French leader also said that Hariri "erred by adding a sectarian factor to the roadmap" before eventually correcting his "mistake."Macron, who visited Lebanon twice in the wake of the explosion, had repeatedly urged the Lebanese not to waste any more time in forming a government. The August 4 explosion of hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate at the Beirut port killed more than 190 people, wounded thousands and ravaged large parts of the capital. The disaster sparked new protests over corruption and mismanagement, prompting the previous cabinet to step down.
The French president said that the roadmap for political and economic reform set out on his last visit on September 1 was still on the table but time was running out.
"It is now up to Lebanese officials to seize this last chance themselves," he said.

Macron: Hezbollah and Amal Movement refused to make concessions, France will not abandon the friendly Lebanese people, road map will continue
NNA/Sunday 27 September 2020
French President Emmanuel Macron accused, in a press conference held today on the situation in Lebanon, the various Lebanese forces and those leading the institutions of clearly refusing to respect the pledges they made to France and the international community. He said that the authority powers and leaders decided instead to betray the pledge, favoring their own interests above that of Lebanon, whereby no one was up to the commitments. Macron, however, stressed that "France will not abandon the friendly Lebanese people, and the road map will continue, and this initiative will continue at the international level, and the formation of a mission government is up to the Lebanese authorities.""Hezbollah cannot be an army fighting Israel and a militia alongside Syria and a respectable party in Lebanon, and it has shown the opposite in recent days," emphasized the French President.
He added: "Hezbollah did not honor the promise it made before me while looking me in the eye," affirming that "both Hezbollah and Amal Movement refused to make concessions."

France’s Macron accuses Lebanon leaders of betrayal over government failure
AFP/Sunday 27 September 2020
French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday accused Lebanon’s leaders of betraying their promises over the failure to form a government in the wake of the giant blast at the Beirut port in August. At a rare news conference devoted to Lebanon, Macron said the political elite were “deciding to betray” their obligations and had committed “collective treason” by failing to form a government. Lebanon’s prime minister-designate, Mustapha Adib, quit on Saturday after trying for almost a month to line up a non-partisan cabinet, dealing a blow to a French plan aimed at rallying sectarian leaders to tackle the worst crisis since the nation’s 1975-1990 civil war. “They have decided to betray this commitment (to form a government),” Macron told reporters, declaring he was “ashamed” of the country’s leaders. “I see that the Lebanese authorities and political forces chose to favour their partisan and individual interests to the detriment of the general interest of the the country,” he added. He also sent a pointed warning to the Iran-backed Shia group Hezbollah, which was well represented in the outgoing government and some analysts accuse of holding up the process. Hezbollah should “not think it is more powerful than it is.... It must show that it respects all the Lebanese. And in recent days, it has clearly shown the opposite,” said Macron. Macron, who visited Lebanon twice in the wake of the explosion, had repeatedly urged the Lebanese not to waste any more time in forming a government. The August 4 explosion of hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate at the Beirut port killed more than 190 people, wounded thousands and ravaged large parts of the capital. The disaster sparked new protests over corruption and mismanagement, prompting the previous cabinet to step down.

Aoun Vows to Remain 'Bulwark' to Honor Presidential Oath
Naharnet/September 27/2020
President Michel Aoun on Sunday pledged that he will remain a “bulwark” in the face of “anyone trying to undermine the content” of his presidential oath of office. “If a promise is sacred, an oath is much more sacred! The oath of respecting the Constitution and laws and preserving the country and its territorial integrity,” Aoun tweeted. “I have made an oath, and I will abide by it until the last day of my tenure. I will remain a firm bulwark in the face of anyone trying to undermine its content,” the president added. Also on Sunday, Aoun condemned the deadly dawn attack on an army post in the northern region of Araman, saluting the two soldiers who were killed in the confrontation for confronting the explosive-armed assailant. The president has also followed up on the security developments in the northern region of Wadi Khaled, hailing the Internal Security Forces’ “security achievement in the face of the terrorist group that infiltrated the region through the Syrian border.”

Attack on Army in Araman Kills 2 after Fierce Wadi Khaled Battle
Associated Press/Agence France Presse/Naharnet/September 27/2020
Gunmen opened fire on an army post in the northern area of Araman at dawn Sunday, triggering a shootout in which two soldiers and one gunman were killed, the army said. Another gunman fled to an unknown destination, according to an army statement. The incident occurred at an army post in Araman in the Minieh region. An army operation is underway to arrest the fugitive and uncover the circumstances of the attack, the military said. Another army statement said the assailant, Omar Brais, was carrying an explosive vest and hand grenades when he tried to storm the army post on a motorcycle. "Guards confronted him, which resulted in his immediate death," the statement said. The shootout occurred as the army was engaged in a heavy exchange of fire with militants linked to extremist groups in northeast Lebanon, close to the border with Syria. The standoff began after the Internal Security Forces raided a house in the Wadi Khaled area where the group was holed up. Videos circulating online from the remote area showed the use of rocket propelled grenades in the battle. The army sealed off the area and has not commented on the operation. The ISF meanwhile said that "all the terrorists" who were holed up in the house were killed in the confrontation. LBCI television meanwhile reported that "nine terrorists were killed and four others arrested" in the operation. A security source said the death toll could rise as more bodies could be buried under the rubble of the house, part of which was blown up during the police operation. The ISF statement said the terrorist cell was made up of more than 15 suspects. It added that three had been arrested in previous raids. The ISF statement said the "terrorist cell" was made up of more than 15 suspects. It added that three had been arrested in previous raids.
A security official said the group includes militants linked to one of Lebanon's most wanted extremists, Khaled Tellawi, who was killed earlier this month during a raid in the country's north that also left four Lebanese soldiers dead. Tellawi was blamed for an attack last month that killed three men in a predominantly Christian northern village. He was described as a member of an extremist group that had links to the Islamic State group. The security official spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the operation.

Parliamentary Consultations to Name New PM Not Imminent
Naharnet/September 27/2020
The binding parliamentary consultations to name a new premier following the resignation of PM-designate Mustafa Adib will not be imminent, media reports said. “The call for parliamentary consultations to pick a prime minister will not be quick,” Presidency sources told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper in remarks published Sunday. The sources said the call for consultations will likely be made in the second half of the coming week. It will happen after “the evaluation of this period, Adib’s experience and the problems that accompanied it as well as the analysis of the reactions to it so that the next step can be calculated and not arbitrary,” the sources added.

Hariri Says Not Running for PM, Vows to Facilitate French Initiative
Naharnet/September 27/2020
Ex-PM Saad Hariri announced Sunday that he is not a candidate for the PM post following the resignation of PM-designate Mustafa Adib. “In view of what is circulating in the media, the press office of former Prime Minister Saad Hariri stresses that he is not a candidate for the formation of the new government,” the office said in a statement. It added that, “however, he maintains his position of supporting the initiative of French president Emmanuel Macron and of facilitating anything that could make it succeed, because it is the only and last opportunity to stop the collapse of Lebanon.”
In remarks to Asharq al-Awsat newspaper published Sunday, Hariri also said that he will not nominate anyone for the post.

UNIFIL Deploys to Beirut to Assist Army in Aftermath of Port Blast
Naharnet/September 27/2020
Following a request from the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) on Sunday deployed a detachment of multinational force to Beirut in order to assist Lebanese authorities with their efforts to deal with the aftermath of the tragic 4 August explosions, UNIFIL said. The deployment early this morning follows the authorization by the U.N. Security Council for the Mission to take “temporary and special measures” to provide support to Lebanon and its people in the aftermath of the explosions.
UNIFIL peacekeepers deployed to the Lebanese capital with heavy machinery and other equipment. The UNIFIL assistance, which will be executed in three phases in about three weeks, is operational at the port as well as in the city center with an engineer-centered task force.
The main areas of support will be: clearing of debris and construction work in order to facilitate the rapid resumption of operations in the Beirut harbor. Since the explosion happened, UNIFIL Head of Mission and Force Commander Major General Stefano Del Col has stated that the Mission stood ready to provide any assistance at its disposal. Following Sunday's deployment of the UNIFIL force in Beirut, Del Col said: “It's a special moment for all of us in UNIFIL to be able to offer some tangible support to the population in need. It is important for a Mission like UNIFIL with over 10,000 troops to help the country that has hosted us for more than 42 years. This support is also in line with the recent call of the Security Council for a strengthened UNIFIL-LAF cooperation."
 

Lebanon Reels after Efforts to Form Government Collapse
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/September 27/2020
Lebanon was left reeling Sunday without the slightest prospect of ending multiple crises, after its premier-designate stepped down following the failure of talks to form a government, despite international pressure. Mustafa Adib's resignation on Saturday ended efforts to hammer out a reformist government in the wake of a colossal August 4 explosion in Beirut that killed 190 people, injured thousands and ravaged large parts of the capital. Political parties had pledged in early September, during a visit to Lebanon by French President Emmanuel Macron, to form within two weeks a cabinet of independent ministers tasked with ending the country's economic malaise. "As the efforts to form a government reached their final phase, it became apparent to me that this consensus... was no longer there," Adib said on Saturday. Under the Lebanese constitution, the president must now hold further talks to nominate another prime minister to form a government, but it is a process that risks dragging out and even failing. "I don't expect a government anytime soon," said Sami Atallah, who heads the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies. "There was a chance, there was a lot of pressure to form a government and it didn't happen," he said, adding there was a "bigger problem" of geopolitical tensions, especially between the United States and Iran. Adib's efforts were mainly hampered by a row over Shiite representation in the government, especially over the finance portfolio, which the Amal Movement and Hizbullah have sought to retain. According to observers, the Shiite allies dug in their heels after recent U.S. sanctions imposed on a minister of Amal and two companies allegedly affiliated with Hizbullah.
'Into the unknown'
Adib's decision to step aside 26 days after his appointment has left the people of Lebanon feeling as though they are back to square one. "The page of Mustafa Adib has turned," the French-language L'Orient-Le Jour newspaper declared on Sunday. It described the return to the drawing board as "a leap into the unknown, even a highway to hell." Earlier this week, President Michel Aoun warned the country was headed to "hell" unless all political parties stepped up and facilitated the formation of a government. The Arabic-language newspaper An-Nahar warned of "grave repercussions," and said all eyes were on Macron, who is due to hold a news conference on Sunday evening. Even before the devastating Beirut port blast, the country was already mired in its worst economic crisis in decades and mass protests that toppled and replaced the government.
After the country for the first time defaulted on its sovereign debt in March, it launched talks with the International Monetary Fund towards lifting the country out of crisis, but those discussions soon stalled. Now, with no new cabinet expected any time soon, analyst Maha Yahya said the country was left with a "lame duck" caretaker government. "Institutions working with it cannot take any decisions and certainly cannot negotiate with the IMF on an economic recovery plan," said the director of the Carnegie Middle East Center. Following the August 4 blast, the country's worst peacetime disaster, the government stepped down and Adib was appointed to form a new one. Many are worried the country is headed from bad to worse. On the night of Saturday to Sunday, two soldiers and a jihadist extremist were killed in the latest episode of a weeks-long manhunt over a murder last month. The country's novel coronavirus infection figures are also on the rise, with more than 35,000 cases recorded since February, including 340 deaths. The U.N. envoy to Lebanon, Jan Kubis, on Saturday reacted with disbelief: "Such a degree of irresponsibility, when the fate of Lebanon and its people is at stake!" "Politicians, have you really scuppered this unique chance created by France?" Analyst Karim Bitar said Lebanon was expected to have a rough patch ahead. "Even if Lebanon is not hell-bound, we will probably witness... the weakening of public institutions, a worsening of the economic crisis... and a wave of emigration," he said.

Israel Says Will Hold U.S.-Mediated Talks with Lebanon on Sea Border
Associated Press/Naharnet/September 27/2020
Israel will hold rare talks with Lebanon next month in an effort to resolve a longstanding maritime border dispute, an Israeli official said. The official said Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz will lead the Israeli delegation in talks mediated by the United States. Representatives from the three countries are likely to speak by video conference because of the coronavirus pandemic, the official said. The official requested anonymity in line with regulations. There was no immediate comment from Lebanon. Israel and Lebanon have no diplomatic relations and are technically in a state of war. They each claim about 860 square kilometers of the Mediterranean Sea as within their own exclusive economic zones. Both are hoping to explore and develop new gas fields in the Mediterranean following a number of big finds in recent years. U.S. diplomats have been shuttling between the two countries and pushing for direct talks in recent years.
Lebanon, which is mired in a severe economic crisis, is especially keen to develop offshore energy resources. The Trump administration is likely to celebrate any such talks as another diplomatic breakthrough in the Middle East.
Israel invaded Lebanon during the country's 1975-1990 civil war to battle Palestinian militants and it occupied a strip of territory in southern Lebanon until 2000, when it withdrew amid military operations against its troops and collaborators. Those operations were spearheaded by Hizbullah, especially in the 1990s. In 2006, Israel fought a month-long war with Hizbullah. Hizbullah has vastly expanded its arsenal of rockets and missiles since then, and today Israel views it as its most immediate military threat. Neither side is believed to be seeking war, but they have traded fire on a number of occasions in recent years, and both have warned that a future conflict would be far more devastating for the other side.

Multiple dangers’: Lebanon’s top Christian cleric warns of crisis without a government
Reuters/September 27/2020
Lebanon’s top Christian cleric said on Sunday the nation faced “multiple dangers” that would be hard to weather without a government, speaking after the prime minister-designate quit and dealt a blow to France’s bid to lift the country out of crisis. Muslim religious figures also said Lebanese needed to unite following Mustapha Adib’s decision to step down on Saturday after his efforts to form a cabinet hit a roadblock over ministerial appointments in the sectarian system.
It leaves Lebanon, with its arrangement of sharing power between Muslims and Christians, rudderless as it faces its deepest crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who had pressed Lebanon’s fractious politicians to reach a consensus over naming Adib on Aug. 31, will speak about the crisis later on Sunday. Patriarch Bechara Boutros Al-Rai, leader of the Maronite church, Lebanon’s biggest Christian community, said Adib’s resignation had “disappointed citizens, especially the youth, who were betting on the start of change in the political class.” Many top politicians, both Christian and Muslim, have held sway for years or even decades. Some are former warlords.
Rai said Lebanon now had to navigate “multiple dangers” without a government at the helm. Rai’s comments were echoed on the streets of Beirut, where mass protests erupted in 2019 as years of mismanagement, corruption and mounting debts finally led to economic collapse.
“We need new people. We need new blood,” said Hassan Amer, 24, serving coffee at a roadside cafe in the capital, which was hammered by a huge port blast on Aug. 4 that killed almost 200 people.
Frustration at Adib’s failure to form a government was voiced by many across religious communities.
A senior Shi’ite Muslim cleric, Sheikh Ahmed Qabalan, said it was a “disaster” that Adib had resigned and called for national unity, state news agency reported.
“We don’t want sectarian or confessional talk,” Lebanon’s top Sunni Muslim religious leader, Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Derian, was quoted by broadcasters as saying.
He said Lebanon’s communities needed to show “understanding and balance” to face the major challenges ahead.
The cabinet formation effort stumbled after Lebanon’s two main Shi’ite groups, Amal and the heavily armed Iran-backed Hezbollah, demanded they name several ministers, including finance, a key role as the nation draws up a rescue plan.
Saad al-Hariri, a former prime minister and leading Sunni politician, said he would not be involved in naming any new premier and that the French plan was “the last and only opportunity to halt Lebanon’s collapse.”
A French road map lays out a reform program for a new government to help trigger billions of dollars of international aid.
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Former Lebanese FM, president's son-in-law, has coronavirus
AP/September 27/2020
A former Lebanese foreign minister and son-in-law of President Michel Aoun has tested positive for the new coronavirus A former Lebanese foreign minister and son-in-law of President Michel Aoun has tested positive for the coronavirus, his office said Sunday. The statement from his office said Gebran Bassil, who also heads the Christian Free Patriotic Movement party, will isolate until he recovers, adding that the infection level is still “low and acceptable.”The announcement comes amid an alarming surge in coronavirus cases in Lebanon, with record numbers registered almost every day for the past week.
The Health Ministry confirmed Saturday 1,280 new coronavirus cases, bringing the overall number of infections in Lebanon to 33,162. The government has recorded 317 deaths from COVID-19 since the first case was reported in late February. It was not clear when Bassil, 50, last saw his father-in-law, the president. Health Minister Hamad Hassan has recommended a total lockdown for two weeks to stem the rise in daily detected infections, but authorities will find it difficult difficult to impose another lockdown amid an unprecedented economic collapse. The rise in cases in Lebanon began after a lockdown was eased and the country’s only international airport was reopened in early July. The surge continued after the massive Aug. 4 explosion in Beirut’s port that killed 193 people, injured at least 6,500 and devastated much of the city.
The blast also overwhelmed Beirut’s hospitals and badly damaged two that had a key role in handling virus cases.

Lebanon Reels After Efforts to Form Government Collapse
Asharq Al-Awsat/Sunday, 27 September, 2020
Lebanon was left reeling Sunday without the slightest prospect of ending multiple crises, after its premier-designate stepped down following the failure of talks to form a government, despite international pressure. Mustapha Adib's resignation on Saturday ended efforts to hammer out a reformist government in the wake of a colossal August 4 explosion in Beirut that killed 190 people, injured thousands, and ravaged large parts of the capital. Political parties had pledged in early September, during a visit to Lebanon by French President Emmanuel Macron, to form within two weeks a cabinet of independent ministers tasked with ending the country's economic malaise. "As the efforts to form a government reached their final phase, it became apparent to me that this consensus... was no longer there," Adib said on Saturday. Under the Lebanese constitution, the president must now hold further talks to nominate another prime minister to form a government, but it is a process that risks dragging out and even failing. "I don't expect a government anytime soon," said Sami Atallah, who heads the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies. "There was a chance, there was a lot of pressure to form a government and it didn't happen," he said, adding there was a "bigger problem" of geopolitical tensions, especially between the United States and Iran. Adib's efforts were hampered by the claims of two Shiite formations, the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, and its ally Amal, led by parliament speaker Nabih Berri, who demanded the finance portfolio. According to observers, the Shiite allies dug in their heels after recent US sanctions imposed on a minister of the Amal party and two companies affiliated with Hezbollah.
- 'Into the unknown' -
Adib's decision to step aside 26 days after his appointment has left the people of Lebanon feeling as though they are back to square one. Earlier this week, Lebanese President Michel Aoun warned the country was headed to "hell" unless all political parties stepped up and facilitated the formation of a government. Even before the devastating Beirut port blast, the country was already mired in its worst economic crisis in decades and mass protests that toppled and replaced the government. Following the August 4 blast, the country's worst peacetime disaster, the government stepped down and Adib was appointed to form a new one. Many are worried the country is headed from bad to worse. The UN envoy to Lebanon, Jan Kubis, on Saturday reacted with disbelief: "Such a degree of irresponsibility, when the fate of Lebanon and its people is at stake!"
"Politicians, have you really scuppered this unique chance created by France?"Analyst Karim Bitar said Lebanon was expected to have a rough patch ahead. "Even if Lebanon is not hell-bound, we will probably witness... the weakening of public institutions, a worsening of the economic crisis... and a wave of emigration," he said.

Lebanese Security Forces Kill 2 Members of Armed Group
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 26 September, 2020
The Lebanese security forces killed at least two militants during a heavy exchange of fire on Saturday with an armed group in northeast Lebanon, close to the Syrian border, security sources said according to Reuters.
Three members of the Lebanese security forces were also injured in the clash, which began after Lebanese forces raided a house in the Wadi Khaled area, where the group that was suspected of planning attacks was holed up, the sources said.
The group included Syrians and Lebanese, the sources said, adding that the scale of the clash, in which militants fired rocket propelled grenades, prompted the Lebanese army to cordon off the area. The sources said the group included people linked to the militant Khaled al-Talawi, who was killed earlier this month in a shootout with security forces. Four Lebanese soldiers were killed in that clash. Talawi was described as a former member of the ISIS group and leader of a cell behind the killing in August of three people in north Lebanon.

Lebanon Army Tracks Down ISIS-Linked Terrorists After Deadly Attack
Asharq Al-Awsat/Sunday, 27 September, 2020
Lebanese police have killed nine suspected members of the ISIS group in the hunt for "terrorists" linked to several deadly attacks, including on soldiers, a security source said Sunday. Saturday's operation came more than a month after the army and security forces launched a manhunt for suspects in the August 21 killing of two municipal policemen and the son of the mayor of the northern village of Kaftoun. Police intelligence units raided a house in the northern region of Wadi Khaled where "suspects linked to the ISIS" militant group had been holed up, "killing all the terrorists inside", the Internal Security Forces (ISF) said in a statement.A security source said "at least nine members of the group were killed". But the source said the death toll could rise as more bodies could be buried under the rubble of the house, part of which was blown up during the police operation.
The ISF statement said the "terrorist cell" was made up of more than 15 suspects. It added that three had been arrested in previous raids. Following the August murders in Kaftoun, the army and police launched operations to track down the assailants. On September 14, the army said four soldiers were killed while attempting to arrest suspected "terrorist" Khaled al-Tallawi at his north Lebanon home, though he was eventually shot dead. Meanwhile, two Lebanese soldiers were killed overnight in an attack on an army post in the locality of Arman-Minyeh, also in the north of the country, the army said Sunday. "Two soldiers were killed, in addition to one terrorist," it said in a statement. An attacker "riding a motorbike tried to enter the army post, and army members confronted him, killing him instantly", it added. They found grenades and an explosives belt on him, the last of which it said "he had intended to detonate inside the post". Wadi Khaled and the Arman-Miniyeh region are near second city Tripoli, which has been rocked by violence involving extremists over the years, including as part of the fallout from the conflict in Syria.

Has Hezbollah defeated France in Lebanon?
Seth J.Frantzman/Jerusalem Post/September 27/2020
France had wanted to reduce the sectarian nature of the government, but Hezbollah has increased its clout in recent years.
A month and a half after a massive explosion in Beirut caused a crisis in Lebanon that saw the government fall, France’s decision to try to push for reforms may have been defeated.
Regional media from the UAE to Turkey are focused on what might come next in Lebanon. Lebanon’s Prime Minister designate Mustapha Adib resigned, according to Turkey's Anadolu news agency. French President Emmanuel Macron will hold a news conference on Sunday to discuss the situation.
Lebanese analysts quoted at Al-Ain said that Lebanon could be heading to “chaos” as Hezbollah and the Amal movement are preventing the creation of a new government. France has sought to mediate in Lebanon, with Macron playing a key role. This even included meetings with Hezbollah’s members of the Lebanese parliament. The political parties and entrenched sectarian elites in Lebanon now appear to have sought to frustrate France’s attempts at reform.
It appears that Hezbollah and Amal had sought to obtain the finance ministry as part of the reform. This would put Iran at the helm of Lebanon’s key ministry. Lebanon already needs $93 billion to bail it out of a financial crisis. Iran has used Lebanon for money laundering and other fraudulent transactions in the past. France had wanted to reduce the sectarian nature of the government, but in Lebanon many ministries are divided as spoils for various groups. Hezbollah has increased its clout in recent years, even though it has only a handful of members of parliament. It has sought to grab the health ministry and other posts.
It also has an ally in Lebanon’s president, Michel Aoun. According to the agreement that governs Lebanon as a sectarian state, the country's president must be a Christian and the prime minister a Sunni Muslim. This agreement dates back decades and was also enshrined in the Taif accords that ended the civil war and empowered the Sunni prime minister with Saudi backing. But Saudi Arabia has lost influence in Lebanon in the last few years, and Iran and Turkey are now trying to increase their influence and hold.
This is why media in the UAE are concerned about chaos in the country. Chaos feeds Iran’s role. Anadolu noted that Adib had given up in the face of failure to form a government.
"I excuse myself from continuing the task of forming the government," he said.
Adib, a former ambassador to Germany, had agreed at the end of August to the task of forming a new government after his predecessor Hassan Diab resigned.
Saad Hariri said “Those rejoicing in the fall of French President Emmanuel Macron’s initiative will bite their fingers in regret for wasting an exceptional opportunity to stop economic collapse and initiate reforms.”
Hariri is a former prime minister and also the son of former prime minister Rafic Hariri, who was murdered by Hezbollah in 2005.
Lebanon is at a crossroads. The US has pushed for mediation on Israel-Lebanese maritime disputes. Hezbollah has sought to leverage anti-US sentiment. Washington airlifted a Lebanese-American out of the country earlier this year and Hezbollah has slammed the US ambassador for interference in the country. The terrorist group has suggested that China could invest in Lebanon. Paris has now sought to play a larger role. France is the former colonial power. The US sanctioned former finance minister Ali Hassan Khalil, who is a member of Amal, in early September, which also appears to have played a role in the impasse. In some ways, the current dispute over Lebanon can be seen as a quest for influence between Iran, the US, Turkey and France.

How Hezbollah destroyed everything that made Lebanon great
Baria Alamuddin/Arab News/September 27/ 2020
بارعة علم الدين: حزب الله دمر كل ما جعل لبنان عظيماً
Does anyone know how many Lebanese prime ministers have been appointed over the past year? With the resignation of Mustapha Adib at the weekend, Hezbollah has thwarted every attempt to form a competent, technocratic administration to steer Lebanon out of this catastrophe; demanding, like gangsters, that it must possess the Finance Ministry, Health, Transport, and everything else it can get its hands on.
We have warned and feared for years that Hassan Nasrallah, Nabih Berri, Michel Aoun and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would burn Lebanon to the ground to protect their interests — and here they are today, gleefully pouring petrol over the flames.
With the departures of Adib and his predecessor Hassan Diab, and yet another caretaker administration, Hezbollah fulfils its desire to remain in control while simply buying time. It insists early elections are unnecessary, but after willfully sabotaging one government after another, is there any alternative?
Hezbollah and Aoun have destroyed everything that made Lebanon great. The Arab world’s banking capital is bankrupt. Tourists don’t frequent destabilized states run by terrorists. Former regional partners refuse to have anything to do with us. Our celebrated culture is trampled underfoot by barbarian theocrats. Beirut no longer even has a viable port.
Recent US sanctions clarify why Hezbollah insists on controlling the Finance Ministry: Ali Hassan Khalil, Finance Minister from 2014 to 2020, helped Hezbollah to circumvent US sanctions by laundering money through public institutions, while exempting Hezbollah personnel from taxes. Control of the department responsible for financial oversight allows Hezbollah and Iran to manage their multimillion-dollar criminal operations with impunity. This is putting the fox in charge of the henhouse!
Transport and Public Works Minister Yousef Fenianos (2016-20) enabled his Hezbollah allies to siphon off millions of dollars of public funds and win contracts for Hezbollah-controlled companies. Control of the airport and borders allows Iran to keep Hezbollah supplied with weapons, while facilitating its income from narcotics and other cross-border crime. US court documents show how Hezbollah personnel facilitated cocaine shipments via the airport in conjunction with Hezbollah security chief Wafiq Safa.
If French and American intelligence knew all this, shouldn’t it have been released into the public domain long before these thieves emptied the treasury, drained the bank accounts of every last teacher, widow and pensioner, and left Lebanon to collapse like the husk of an ancient, desiccated cedar tree?
Nasrallah’s insistence that certain ministries be exclusive fiefdoms of Shiite Hezbollah appointees is inherently corrupt. The invariable result is departments flooded with faction members, lacking the qualifications or motivation to do anything other than extort bribes from impoverished citizens, while their bosses pocket the departmental budget. These methods of doing business are what got Lebanon into this current mess.
Hezbollah invariably demands the Health Ministry, because it wields Lebanon’s fourth-largest departmental budget at $338 million, while also allowing the movement to secure free health care for its thousands of Syria veterans. With this ministry under Hezbollah control, Lebanon’s pharmaceutical market has been deluged with counterfeit Iranian medicines.
Aoun and Gebran Bassil justified the Free Patriotic Movement’s (FPM) unpopular alliance with Hezbollah to their Christian supporters by claiming that control over the presidency and key ministries would empower Lebanese Christians. Instead they have broken the nation’s back, prompting a vast diaspora of Christians and other sects to take their families’ lives in their hands and flee Lebanon for brighter prospects overseas.
The FPM and Hezbollah have become inseparable partners in crime as they bleed the Lebanese economy white. Thanks to their colossal corruption and incompetence, the Lebanese state power company (under the FPM-controlled Energy Ministry) loses $2 billion a year — about 40 percent of Lebanon’s national debt. While most citizens pay extortionate bills despite going without electricity for much of the day, about 80 percent of people in Hezbollah-controlled areas get free electricity.
Hezbollah and Iran control Lebanese foreign policy via the FPM: Despite Lebanon’s commitment to a self-distancing policy, former foreign minister Bassil invariably takes Iran’s side in regional disputes. After Bassil boycotted Arab League condemnation of 2016 attacks on GCC missions in Tehran, the GCC cut $3 billion in annual funding for the Lebanese Army.
Hezbollah and Aoun have destroyed everything that made Lebanon great. The Arab world’s banking capital is bankrupt
By opposing US efforts to reimpose UN sanctions, French President Emmanuel Macron and the Europeans are trying to encourage Iran and Hezbollah to take a more constructive approach to Lebanese Cabinet formation. Instead, this softly-softly approach simply reassures Tehran that it can continue menacing and dominating its neighbors.
Macron challenged Hezbollah: “Everyone knows you have an Iranian agenda ... But are you Lebanese — yes or no? Do you want to help the Lebanese — yes or no?” After Hezbollah’s sabotage of Adib’s Cabinet-forming efforts, the answers to these questions are obvious to everyone. If Macron is serious about penalizing those holding Lebanon to ransom, he must go ahead; it’s the least these criminals deserve.
Lebanon is drowning. Macron, the IMF, the GCC have all thrown lifebelts, yet those steering Lebanon are hell-bent on dragging it down into the depths of the ocean. Will it be any surprise when Macron and the IMF conclude that Lebanon is beyond saving?
If Lebanon fails to grasp these lifelines, more people will be starving and impoverished; schools, hospitals and essential services will close; society will collapse; and those who can will flee overseas. State disintegration will be ugly. We know what sectarian war looks like. Who desires to tread that path again?
I say this not to foment pessimism and cynicism, but as a call to action. Hezbollah has proved its refusal to compromise, so a critical mass of other factions and components of society must forge an alternative way forward, demonstrating to the world that Lebanon is deserving of the life-saving assistance we so desperately need. There is no magic exit from this crisis. It will be slow and painful, but we must commence the journey.
Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rai has been heroically pressing all Lebanese parties to commit to his principle of “neutrality,” putting the interests of Lebanon first. Only once sovereignty is restored to its citizens, and we consecrate a leadership wholly dedicated to the national interest, can Lebanon recommence its long path back to greatness.
• Baria Alamuddin is an award-winning journalist and broadcaster in the Middle East and the UK. She is editor of the Media Services Syndicate and has interviewed numerous heads of state.
 

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on September 27-28/2020

Assad sends out feelers for peace deal with Israel – report
DEBKAfile/September 27/2020
Syrian President Bashar Assad, evidently disinclined to be left out in the cold by the Arab world’s pursuit of peace with Israel, has put out his own feelers, according to the influential Saudi Sharq al-Awsat of Sunday, Sept. 27. He is considering climbing on the bandwagon driven by the Trump administration, whose peace diplomacy brought about United Arab Emirates and Bahrain normalization deals with the Jewish state. More Arab governments, including Sudan, are heading in the same direction. Latterly, as DEBKAfile reported this week, Lebanon and Israel have also been led to the table to discuss their longstanding maritime and land border disputes. The Sharq al-Awsat’s senior commentator Omar Hamidi noted that Syria’s Bashar al Assad, like his predecessor and father Hafez al-Assad, has more than once, when finding themselves in difficult quandaries, turned to seeking an accommodation with Jerusalem as the gateway to Washington. Today, trouble is crowding in on his regime from all directions: the Syrian economy is drowning fast, the generals and business leaders in his circle are at each other’s throats, his battlefronts are at a standstill, with chaos on the Syrian Golan; the Turkish army is entrenched in the north and the Kurds in the northeast are unifying for self-rule under US military protection. While the Syrian ruler would seek joint Russian-American patronage for a new negotiating track with Israel, he is not clear on how his leading protector, Iran, will respond to the move. He has therefore not yet decided to jump in and is still turning the option over in his mind. The Trump administration’s recognition of Israel sovereignty over a part of the Golan could be an obstacle. However, Putin, if he decides to join the move, may be asked to conjure up a creative formula that falls between security control and full sovereignty to resolve the issue. Some Israel security circles favor a deal with Syria as it holds some prospect for breaking up Assad’s alliance with Tehran, which was recently solidified by a formal defense cooperation accord. Once clinched, this deal may eventually persuade Damascus to get rid of the regime’s Iranian “advisers” and expel the IRGC-backed Shiite militias from the country. The omens for the coming Jewish year are therefore positive. In 2020, Yom Kippur, the most solemn day of prayer and fasting on the Jewish calendar, is the harbinger of an unparalleled era of Middle East peace for the Jewish state – in stark contrast to the perils and deaths of Israel’s most perilous and deadly conflict with the Arab world that marked Yom Kippur 1973.

Will the Syrian-Israeli Negotiations Resume?
London- Ibrahim Hamidi/Asharq Al Awsat/Sunday, 27 September, 2020
Will the Syrian-Israeli peace negotiations resume? Where is Russia and the United States from opening the channels between Tel Aviv and Damascus? What is the required price and the rewards offered? These questions have been raised for a long time, but they have returned intensely to the diplomatic corridors in recent weeks as a widespread belief emerged about the presence of secret negotiations between the two capitals. There is a reasonable explanation for this belief: modern history showed that whenever Damascus was on the brink of major transformations or isolation, the only “way out” was to resume negotiations, according to the saying: “The road to Washington always passes through Tel Aviv.” When the Soviet Union collapsed and the features of the new world order started to emerge, President Hafez al-Assad decided to participate in the Madrid Peace Conference at the end of 1991 and then enter into direct negotiations with Israel. Those were led by then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and then-Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa at the beginning of 2000. Two decades of negotiations were sufficient to spare Damascus the throes of transformations in the region and the world. But Hafez al-Assad passed away in the mid-2000s without signing the peace agreement. When former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated in 2005, Damascus was isolated from its regional and international entourage. All eyes turned to Tel Aviv. In 2008, a secret negotiation channel was opened between the two sides, the Syrian aim of which was to break this state of isolation. This is what happened. Secret negotiations took place. President Bashar al-Assad was invited to international and Arab conferences, tours, and summits. In the end, the talks sponsored by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan collapsed, and in December 2008 Assad did not agree to direct negotiations. In this regard, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert quotes former US President George W. Bush as saying: “For me, if you sign an agreement with Assad, it will make me very happy, because I want the Syrian president to know that the road to Washington passes through Jerusalem.” Damascus is now in the American “isolation ax”. Is repeating previous experiences the only way out?
The first explicit “peaceful signal” came from Damascus. After the signing of the Israeli agreements with the Emirates and Bahrain, Damascus has not issued any official condemnation statement, contrary to its ally, Tehran. It remained silent. Silence here is a political stance. Indeed, the Emirati-Israeli agreement coincided with the arrival of a shipment of UAE humanitarian aid to the Syrian capital. In fact, this Syrian “peace signal” is based on a pivotal development that took place in mid-2018, when US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, sponsored an agreement guaranteeing the return of the Syrian government forces to the south of the country in exchange for the removal of Iranian fighters from the borders of Jordan and the Golan and the deployment of the UN Disengagement Observer Force.
The security and military arrangements in the Golan are in accordance with the disengagement agreement and UN Resolution 338, Putin said, meaning a return to pre-2011 arrangements.
But talks have recently emerged about a bigger step between Damascus and Tel Aviv, which should include answers to three elements: First, US-Russian sponsorship, as the US mediation alone is no longer sufficient for several reasons, including the Russian presence in Syria and the strong relationship between Moscow and Tel Aviv and Damascus. Second, the Iranian presence. This file represents an American-Russian-Israeli intersection point. It was previously tested in the 2018 deal and has been a major dossier in the Syrian-Israeli negotiations, when Tel Aviv’s interest shifted from convincing Damascus to “normalization” and “normal peace relations” to regional concessions regarding abandoning Tehran and Hezbollah. But is Damascus able/willing to abandon its alliance with Tehran, which is deeply involved in Syria? Can Russia make such a deal? Does the grand bargain include all foreign powers, including the American and Turkish forces? What is the internal political price required from Damascus for such arrangements? Third, the future of the Golan. Trump had announced his support for Israel’s decision to extend its sovereignty over the Golan. But Damascus considered the decision “void”. Will Russia offer a “magic solution” that combines sovereignty, geopolitical interests, and security arrangements? What is the relationship of such a deal with the US election results and the questions of a “smooth transition” in the White House?

After escaping prison in Iran, persecuted Christian leader speaks out
Emily Judd, Al Arabiya English/Sunday 27 September 2020
A Christian pastor who recently escaped a 10-year prison sentence in Iran by fleeing the country said the Iranian government has criminalized Christianity and considers the religion “fundamentally political.”“It seems Christianity, or at least Protestantism, is considered fundamentally political,” Bet-Tamraz said during an interview with Christian watchdog Article 18 after his successful escape from Iran. A longtime leader of the Assyrian Pentecostal Church of Iran, Bet-Tamraz was first arrested in 2014 when 70 Iranian intelligence agents raided his home. After a six-year long legal battle, he was recently sentenced to 10 years in prison. He escaped Iran with his wife on August 15. The 65-year-old pastor said leaving his homeland was the “most painful” trip of his life, but that he was left with no choice after being sentenced to 10 years in prison last month. “You can’t easily leave your homeland, where you grew up…I didn’t want to leave Iran at all. If they gave me two years, three years in prison, I would have endured it,” he said. ‘The pain is that you are persecuted for your beliefs’ While Iran is home to nearly 300,000 Christians, they are not free to worship, observe, practice, or teach their faith.
Bet-Tamraz said Iranian authorities “interfered in the affairs of the church many times” and that despite the community adhering to rules imposed upon them by the government, they were still under attack. “We have always had this pressure, since two days after the [1979 Islamic] Revolution,” said Bet-Tamraz.
The Iranian authorities “really just don’t want active Christians to be there,” he added. The constitution of Iran recognizes Shia Islam as the official religion of the country. While the government purports to protect religious minorities - like Christians, Sunni Muslims, Jews, Baha’i’s, and others – they are frequently subject to harassment, detention, flogging, and even execution.
“The pain is that you are persecuted for your beliefs,” said Bet-Tamraz, who spent 65 days in solitary confinement in Iran’s Evin prison, notorious for its human rights abuse. His alleged crime was offering Christian worship services in Persian – the official language of Iran - in addition to Assyrian.
Bet-Tamraz’s church in Tehran was shut down in 2009 and he was later charged with “conducting evangelism” and “illegal house church activities” – acts that the Iranian regime considers threats to national security. “We were told not to use the Persian language … for years I resisted this very much … this caused them to raid the church and close it,” Bet-Tamraz said, adding that he continued to hold services in his home until his arrest in 2014. According to Bet-Tamraz, the government saw his case as “completely political and security-related.”During his sentencing, the judge told Bet-Tamraz that he “acted against national security” through his Christian practice.
Family punishment
Bet-Tamraz’s immediate family – including his two children – have also been targeted by the Iranian government for their church activities. Bet-Tamraz’s wife Shamiram was sentenced to five years in prison for allegedly training church leaders and pastors to act as spies. She now lives with Bet-Tamraz in an undisclosed location outside of Iran. Read more: String of fires at Christian, Hindu, Jewish holy sites in Iran ‘deliberate’: Expert Their daughter Dabrina escaped Iran nine years ago after being arrested multiple times and now lives in Europe.Their son Ramiel was released from an Iranian prison in March after serving time for organizing and conducting house churches. Bet-Tamraz said that being separated from people dear to him in Iran, including his son, is “extremely difficult.”“We hope to see them again one day,” he said.

Years After Second Uprising Palestinians Still Face Bleak Future
Asharq Al-Awsat/Sunday, 27 September, 2020
Two decades on from the second intifada, Palestinians who grew up in the shadow of the uprising find themselves surrounded by physical and political barriers with little hope for the future. In Jenin refugee camp, in the north of the occupied West Bank, the walls are plastered with posters showing young Palestinian men wearing keffiyeh scarfs around their necks and clutching AK-47 assault rifles. Whether killed by Israeli forces or jailed, their images have faded over the years. "When I walk through the camp, I try to reconcile my memory with what I see today," said Nidal Naghnaghyeh Turkeman, 48, who spent 17 years in prison for his role in the uprising. Nidal fought in the ranks of the main Palestinian faction Fatah in the first intifada (1987 to 1993) which preceded a brief optimistic period when the Oslo peace accords brought hope of a lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But by the turn of the century disillusionment had set in and the second intifada broke out after right-wing Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in annexed east Jerusalem on September 28, 2000. The move was seen as a provocation by Palestinians and violent clashes between them and Israeli forces followed. The second intifada lasted five years, during which attacks were carried out in Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank. In response, Israel reoccupied much of the West Bank and began building a separation barrier between the two communities that in places cuts deep into occupied territory. Jenin refugee camp was caught up in the violence and in 2002 was besieged by Israeli forces for more than a month. Turkeman, who lost two brothers in the fighting, was jailed for his role in an attack shortly after the siege which killed six Israeli civilians.
'Emigration or fighting'
While reminders of the uprising can be seen on the streets of Jenin, such as a former fighter selling grapes in a wheelchair, daily life has changed significantly over the past two decades. Israel built the West Bank security barrier -- which Palestinians call an apartheid wall separating them from Jerusalem -- saying it was necessary to prevent attacks. In Gaza, the militant group Hamas took power and the impoverished and densely-populated coastal enclave has been under a crippling Israeli blockade since 2007. In December 2017, US President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, going against international consensus that the city's status can only be defined as part of a peace accord. Turkeman's twin daughters, Yara and Sara, were born just weeks before the siege and saw little of their father growing up. "At the start we rejected him. We couldn't find a place for him in our hearts," said Sara, an 18-year-old studying IT at university. Despite having no memories of the second intifada, the twins say their father is still viewed as a hero by young Palestinians in Jenin. "Today, we are still in the intifada, there are attacks every day, people wounded and nothing has been solved," said Sara, her sister nodding her head in agreement. "There is no future here, the only two options are emigration or fighting."
'Loss of hope'
The Israeli military controls 60 percent of the West Bank and many Palestinians lament how the occupation has been normalized over the decades following the unrealized Oslo accords. The Palestinian leadership has slammed agreements Israel signed with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain at a September 15 White House ceremony hosted by Trump. But their calls for protest have largely fallen flat with young Palestinians who, according to analyst Ghassan Khatib, "feel really isolated and deprived" of any role in politics. "There haven't been elections for 15 years and with the economic crisis... young people think more about trying to find a job," said the Palestinian expert. There is a marked generational gap between 60 percent of the Palestinian population who are under 30, according to United Nations data, and the leadership of 84-year-old Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas. "The crisis of this generation really started during the second intifada," said Khatib. "Palestinian youth began to understand that neither the peace process nor armed combat worked, this led to a loss of hope," he added. In the streets of Jenin, 20-year-old barber Oday says his priority is to earn money to support his family and then get married.
"We talk more about what the Israeli army does, the (house) demolitions, attacks, those wounded," said Oday, who spends his free time playing video games. The Israeli army regularly demolishes Palestinian homes built without permits -- which are almost impossible to obtain -- or those belonging to people suspected of carrying out attacks. In Abu Dis, which is on the outskirts of annexed east Jerusalem and cut off from the city center by the barrier, fallout from the uprising looms large. "Life must have been better for the previous generation, because there were no walls, checkpoints, and there were job opportunities," said 18-year-old Aya. Studying to become a carer, Aya must pass through an Israeli checkpoint to travel from her home to the nearby Al-Quds University. Gazing at the high concrete wall, Muayed, a 22-year-old law student, said it represented the "biggest example" of the challenges young Palestinians face.
'We have no future'
In Gaza, Palestinians are facing considerably worse conditions, with the Israeli blockade leading to perennial power cuts, a lack of clean water, and a youth unemployment rate hitting 65 percent, according to World Bank data. "Here, we have no future," said Saja Emad, a 20-year-old Gazan.
"There's the blockade, we can't travel, Hamas and Fatah are divided, and there's no work for young people. We are frustrated and don't have hope anymore of seeing a Palestinian state in the near future." Since Hamas took over the enclave in 2007 after bloody clashes with Abbas's Fatah, it has fought three wars with Israel, while thousands of Gazans have been shot by Israeli forces during protests at the border fence. The protests at the fence started in March 2018 and ended late last year without significant Israeli concessions, ridding many young Palestinians of their hopes for political change. But while many Palestinians are focusing on just getting by, in Jenin, Turkeman believes a third "and bigger" intifada will erupt one day. "I'm still trying to get to know my daughters, to build bridges with them, and like me, they think that the fight must continue because they are suffering," he said.

Jordan’s monarch dissolves parliament in preparation for November election
Reuters/September 27/ 2020
AMMAN: Jordan's King Abdullah dissolved parliament on Sunday, officials said, which under constitutional rules means the government must resign within a week, paving the way for elections in November.
In July, Jordan's electoral commission set Nov. 10 as the date for parliamentary elections after the monarch called for countrywide polls to be held at the end of the parliament's four-year term.

Egypt’s El-Sisi warns of instability after protest calls
AFP/September 27/2020
CAIRO: Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi warned on Sunday against attempts to stoke instability in the country, following a recent spate of scattered and small-scale anti-government protests. “Some people have been trying in recent weeks to take advantage of the tough measures we are taking,” El-Sisi said at a ceremony to inaugurate an oil refining complex north of Cairo. “They choose the hard conditions to harm and cast doubts among Egyptians over what we do.”Dozens of people took part in rare protests in recent days in several villages in Egypt, according to videos shared widely on social media, especially by sympathizers of the Muslim Brotherhood, an outlawed group. The small-scale demonstrations come amid mounting anger, particularly in rural and low-income areas, against sweeping government campaigns to stop illegal construction, which have required people to pay fines to legalize home-ownership. Exiled businessman Mohamed Ali, who has urged anti-El-Sisi protests since last year, has intensified his calls in recent weeks in online videos, calling on Egyptians take to the streets against the government. During his speech, El-Sisi thanked Egyptians for not heeding the calls, saying the government was undertaking the measures as part of reforms. On Saturday, family and medical sources said a man was killed in clashes between protesters and police in a village south of Cairo.

Armenia says it is checking report of Syrian fighters in Azerbaijan
Reuters/Sunday 27 September 2020
Armenian Defense Ministry said on Sunday it was checking reports about combatants from Syria who are allegedly fighting for the Azerbaijan's side in clashes over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh province. Hikmet Hajiyev, the foreign policy aide to the Azeri president, dismissed the report carried by the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights as "nonsense". At least 16 military and several civilians were killed on Sunday in the heaviest clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan since 2016, reigniting concern about stability in the South Caucasus, a corridor for pipelines carrying oil and gas to world markets.

Armenia declares martial law and mobilization amid Azerbaijan clashes
Agencies/Sunday 27 September 2020
Armenia has declared martial law and total military mobilization following clashes with Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Sunday. Tensions rose between Armenia and Azerbaijan on Sunday morning over clashes in which Yerevan said Azeri forces shelled the region of Nagorno-Karabakh and Baku accused Armenian forces of shelling Azeri military and civilian positions. Armenian forces have destroyed four Azerbaijani helicopters, 15 drones, and 10 tanks in clashes in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, the defense ministry of the region's administration said on Sunday.
Turkey supports Azerbaijan
Turkey has voiced its support for Azerbaijan in response to the clashes. “While I call on the Armenian people to take hold of their future against their leadership that is dragging them to catastrophe and those using it like puppets, we also call on the the entire world to stand with Azerbaijan in their battle against invasion and cruelty,” said Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Twitter. “We will support our Azerbaijani brothers with all our means in their fight to protect their territorial integrity,” added Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar in a statement. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan later called on the international community to ensure that Turkey does not involve itself in Armenia's conflict with Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, trading barbs with Ankara. Pashinyan also said Turkey's behavior could have destructive consequences for the South Caucasus and neighbouring regions.
Turkey is a key ally of Baku with close cultural and linguistic ties with Azerbaijan

Erdogan Vows Support to Baku against Armenia as West, Russia Urge Ceasefire
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/September 27/2020
Turkey on Sunday vowed complete support for Baku and called on Armenia to give up its "aggression" after heavy fighting erupted in Azerbaijan's breakaway region of Nagorny Karabakh. The worst clashes since 2016 broke out on Sunday between arch-foes Azerbaijan and Armenia who have been locked for decades in a territorial dispute over Nagorny Karabakh.
Turkey is a key ally of Baku with close cultural and linguistic ties with Azerbaijan.
Ankara has no diplomatic relations with Yerevan due to a dispute over the mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire which Armenia says is a genocide.
"The Turkish people will support our Azerbaijani brothers with all our means as always," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan tweeted.
He accused Armenia of "being the biggest threat in the region to peace and stability" and criticized the international community for failing to give the "necessary and sufficient reaction" to Armenia's "aggression."
Erdogan also said he held a phone call with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev during which he was "witness once again to his shrewd and determined position."
"The greatest obstacle to peace and stability in the Caucasus is Armenia's aggression, and it should give up this aggression which will throw the region into fire," Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said in a statement.
Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin "strongly" condemned the clashes and said Armenia "once again violated international law."
He called on the international community to "say stop to this dangerous provocation" in a tweet.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov discussed the crisis on Sunday during a telephone conversation, a Turkish diplomatic source said, without giving details.
France meanwhile called for Azerbaijan and Armenian separatists fighting over the Nagorny Karabakh region to "immediately cease hostilities and resume dialogue."
France, along with Russia and the United States, has mediated peace efforts over the breakaway region as the "Minsk Group", but the last big push for a peace deal collapsed in 2010. France, "with its Russian and American partners, reiterates its commitment to reach a negotiated and durable settlement to the conflict" with "respect for international law," the foreign ministry said in a statement, adding it was "deeply concerned about the large-scale confrontations."
European Council president Charles Michel for his part called for a halt to fighting and an "immediate return to negotiations." "Military action must stop, as a matter of urgency, to prevent a further escalation," Michel tweeted, calling for "an immediate return to negotiations, without preconditions."
Russia meanwhile called for an immediate ceasefire and the start of talks. "We are calling on the sides to immediately halt fire and begin talks to stabilize the situation," the foreign ministry said. Germany for its part called for an "immediate" halt to the fighting, saying the conflict can only be resolved through dialogue.
"I call on both parties to the conflict to immediately stop all hostilities, especially the shelling of villages and towns," Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said in a statement, voicing "alarm" at reports of civilian casualties. He urged a return to talks to resolve the dispute over the breakaway region, saying that the so-called Minsk Group "stood ready" to help. "The conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region can only be resolved through negotiations," added the German foreign minister, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency.

US President Donald Trump demands Biden take drug test before or after debate
AFP, Washington/Sunday 27 September 2020
US President Donald Trump demanded Sunday that his Democratic rival Joe Biden take a drug test either before or after the pair’s first debate on Tuesday, in his latest salvo against his opponent’s mental acuity. “I will be strongly demanding a Drug Test of Sleepy Joe Biden prior to, or after, the Debate on Tuesday night,” Trump tweeted. “Naturally, I will agree to take one also. His Debate performances have been record setting UNEVEN, to put it mildly. Only drugs could have caused this discrepancy???” he continued, without offering any evidence for the claim.
According to US media reports, on Saturday their teams finalized the conditions for the debate, to be moderated by Fox News reporter Chris Wallace, including forgoing the traditional handshake and with only a small audience due to Covid-19 restrictions. The condition of a drugs test was not mentioned.
The 74-year-old Trump has spent months denigrating 77-year-old Biden’s mental state, and suggested several times in recent weeks without any evidence that the former vice president may be using unspecified drugs to boost his performance.
Tuesday’s clash in Cleveland, Ohio, the first of three 90-minute debates, represents the first time voters will have the chance to see the candidates facing off against one another directly.

US Secretary Pompeo heads for Greece seeking ‘de-escalation’ in Eastern Mediterranean
AFP, Washington/Sunday 27 September 2020
America’s top diplomat Mike Pompeo left Washington on Sunday for Greece, where he intends to call for the de-escalation of tensions in the eastern Mediterranean and encourage a nascent dialogue with Turkey. The secretary of state’s first stop on a mini European tour will be Thessaloniki, in northern Greece, on Monday, where he will meet his counterpart Nikos Dendias. On Tuesday he will head for Crete to meet with Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and visit the NATO naval base in Souda Bay. The tour also includes stops in Italy, the Vatican and Croatia.
Greece and fellow NATO member Turkey are at loggerheads over energy exploration in disputed waters after Ankara stepped up hydrocarbon research activities in the sea. But on Tuesday they said they were ready to start talks over the tensions, which have been running high for weeks.
The US has been vocal on “the need to de-escalate in the Eastern Med,” a senior US official told journalists before the tour, stressing that Pompeo had “expressed his deep concern.”He also wants to embrace “the recent positive developments and the prospect of return to dialogue,” the official added.
The official insisted on the need to reduce “the likelihood of any accidents or incidents,” and called for “Greece and Turkey to move forward on that and ideally be able to ... complete an agreement.” Washington encourages “all states to resolve maritime delimitation issues peacefully and in accordance with international law,” he continued. The visit to Thessaloniki is also intended as a sign to the Balkans on American willingness to invest in the region, the State Department said. Pompeo will travel Wednesday and Thursday to Rome to meet with Italian authorities. There he will discuss efforts by the Trump administration to deter its European allies from using equipment by Chinese manufacturer Huawei in developing their ultra-fast 5G cell-phone networks. With Sino-American trade tensions rapidly turning into a new Cold War, the US president is accusing Huawei of being a tool for Beijing’s espionage. Pompeo is also scheduled to attend a meeting at the Vatican on religious freedom, his human rights priority. There, too, he will warn of China’s actions against minorities, including Muslims. Finally, he will make a brief stop in Dubrovnik, Croatia, on Friday.
 

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on September 27-28/2020

France: More Terrorism, More Silence
Giulio Meotti/Gatestone Institute/September 27, 2020
This brand of extremism has also managed to transform many European citizens into prisoners, people hiding in their own countries, sentenced to death and forced to live in houses unknown even to their friends and families. And we got used to it!
"[T]his lack of courage to follow in Charlie's footsteps comes at a price, we are losing freedom of speech and an insidious form of self-censorship is gaining ground." — Flemming Rose, Le Point, September 2, 2020.
"To put it simply, freedom of speech is in bad shape around the world. Including in Denmark, France and throughout the West. These are troubled times; people prefer order and security to freedom." — Flemming Rose, Le Point, August 15, 2020.
On September 25, in Paris, two people were stabbed and seriously wounded outside the former offices of Charlie Hebdo, where 12 of the satirical magazine's editors and cartoonists were murdered in 2015. Pictured: Firefighters and paramedics evacuate a wounded victim from the site of the attack.
On September 25, in Paris, two people were stabbed and seriously wounded outside the former offices of Charlie Hebdo, where 12 of the satirical magazine's editors and cartoonists were murdered by extremist Muslims in 2015. The suspect, in police custody, is being investigated for terrorism.
The accused murderers in the 2015 attacks are currently on trial in Paris.

Shortly before the knifing attack, on September 22, Charlie Hebdo's director of human resources, Marika Bret, did not come home. In fact, she no longer has a home. She was evicted after serious and concrete death threats from extremist Muslims. She decided to make her "exfiltration" public for French intelligence to alert the public to the threat of extremism in France.
"I have lived under police protection for almost five years", she told the weekly Le Point.
"My security agents received specific and detailed threats. I had ten minutes to pack and leave the house. Ten minutes to give up a part of one's life is a bit short and it was very violent. I will not go home. I am losing my home to outbursts of hatred, the hatred that always begins with the threat of instilling fear. We know how it can end".
Bret also claimed that the French Left abandoned the "battle for secularism".
From the start of the trial of the men accused of committing the murders at Charlie Hebdo in 2015 -- and especially since the renewed publication of Mohammed cartoons -- Charlie Hebdo has received threats of all kinds -- including from al Qaeda. Security today at the satirical magazine is massive. "The address of our headquarters is secret, there are security gates everywhere, armored doors and windows, armed security agents, we can hardly get anyone in", Bret said.
Today, there are 85 policemen protecting Charlie's journalists.
Bret has become another example of the clandestine nature of freedom of expression in France, the country of Voltaire. The first was Robert Redeker, a professor of philosophy. On September 17, 2006, he arose early to write an article for Le Figaro on Europe's grappling with Islam. Three days later, he was in a safe house and on the run.
Last January, Mila O., a 16-year-old French girl, made insulting comments about Islam during a livestream on Instagram.
"During her livestream, a Muslim boy asked her out in the comments, but she turned him down because she is gay. He responded by accusing her of racism and calling her a 'dirty lesbian'. In an angry follow-up video, streamed immediately after she was insulted, Mila responded by saying that she 'hates religion'".
Mila continued, saying among other things:
"Are you familiar with freedom of expression? I didn't hesitate to say what I thought. I hate religion. The Koran is a religion of hatred; there is only hatred in it. That's what I think. I say what I think... Islam is sh*t... I'm not a racist at all. One cannot simply be racist against a religion... I say what I want, I say what I think. Your religion is sh*t. I'd stick a finger up your god's a**h*le..."
After her school's address was posted on social media, she was forced to leave and transfer to a different school, this time kept secret.
The journalist Éric Zemmour was attacked several times outside his house; the French-Moroccan journalist Zineb el Rhazoui also found the address of her home published on social media.
Meanwhile, to his credit, French President Emmanuel Macron has been defending Charlie Hebdo's right to freedom of expression. Blasphemy, he said, "is no crime."
"The law is clear: we have the right to blaspheme, to criticize, to caricature religions. The republican order is not a moral order... what is outlawed is to incite hatred and attack dignity."
A 2007 legal case ruled that "In France it is possible to insult a religion, its figures and its symbols ... however, insulting those who follow a religion is outlawed."
The courageous words of the French authorities, however, seem harmless, pale and dull, compared to the strength of extremist violence and intimidation.
Islamic fundamentalism has already managed to displace not only thousands of persecuted Christians -- such as Asia Bibi, forced to flee for her life from Pakistan to Canada after she was acquitted of committing blasphemy. This brand of extremism has also managed to transform many European citizens into prisoners, people hiding in their own countries, sentenced to death and forced to live in houses unknown even to their friends and families. And we got used to it!
On the day of Iran's death sentence against Salman Rushdie for his novel, The Satanic Verses, he and his wife, Marianne Wiggins, were taken from their home in North London by the British secret service, to the first of more than fifty "safe houses" in which the writer lived for the next ten years.
The Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders -- whose name, as the next to be murdered, was found on a sheet of paper knifed into the murdered filmmaker, Theo van Gogh -- has been living in safe houses since 2004. "I am in jail," he says, "and they are walking around free."
Ten years ago, a Seattle Weekly reporter, Molly Norris, in solidarity with the endangered makers of the television cartoon "South Park," also drew a caricature of Mohammed. The last newspaper article that talked about her stated:
"You may have noticed that the Molly Norris strip is not included in this week's issue. That's because there is no more Molly... on the advice of FBI security specialists, she will be moving and changing her name..."
The Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten, which first printed cartoons of Mohammed in 2005, gave up. The paper declined to republish the caricatures of the Prophet of Islam when Charlie Hebdo printed them again on its front page. The editor who published the cartoons at Jyllands Posten, Flemming Rose, is still escorted by bodyguards. "I really admire Charlie's courage," he said.
"Heroes who have not succumbed to threats or violence. Unfortunately, they received limited support. No publication in France or Europe behaves like Charlie. That is why I believe that in Europe there is an unwritten law against blasphemy. I am not criticizing the journalists and editors who make this choice. We cannot blame people who, unlike Charlie, do not put their lives in danger. But let us not be fooled: this lack of courage to follow in Charlie's footsteps comes at a price, we are losing freedom of speech and an insidious form of self-censorship is gaining ground".
In recent days, the new editor of Jyllands Posten, Jacob Nybroe, repeated:
"We will not publish them anymore. I confirmed this editorial line when I arrived and received a lot of applause. I may look like a coward, but we cannot do it".
The names of Danish cartoonists appeared on the same "hit list" that Al Qaeda published with the name of Charlie Hebdo's editor-in chief, Stéphane Charbonnier, murdered in the 2015 massacre. The Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard is alive only because during a terror assault on his home, he hid.
Today Jyllands Posten's headquarters has bulletproof windows, metal bars and slabs, barbed wire and video cameras. It sits opposite the port of Aarhus, the second largest city in Denmark, and is under surveillance day and night. Each automatic door, each elevator, requires a badge and a code. You enter it as if it were a bank vault. One door opens and after it closes, the next door opens. The journalists who work there enter one at a time. "To put it simply, freedom of speech is in bad shape around the world. Including in Denmark, France and throughout the West," Rose said, "These are troubled times; people prefer order and security to freedom."
If all of us do not defend our freedoms, soon we will not have them anymore.
*Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.
© 2020 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

The Changed Meaning of the Palestinian Cause: Why The Astonishment?
Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al Awsat/September 27/2020
The Arab Levant has been undergoing stormy transformations. Over the years, spanning less than the past two decades, Syria and Iraq completely changed, and now major changes are sweeping through Lebanon.
A few of these changes were positive. Most of them were negative. Another portion remains ambiguous.
In 2003, through illegal justifications, many of which were lies, the Americans toppled Saddam Hussein. The dictator fell easily after he had been ruling as vice-president since 1968 and as an absolute ruler since 1979.
Political democracy was accompanied by an explosion of sectarian rot, which had been repressed by the tyrannical state that was aggravating it in the dark behind closed doors. Iran, through its sectarian militias, stretched its hand out and seized the lion’s share for itself.
We are now facing another Iraq. Mustafa Kadhimi’s attempt to take the country out of the whale’s mouth is still being tested. It may fail and may succeed, but in both cases, Iraq will not be as we have known it to be. The relationship between its Shiites and Sunnis, its Kurds with its center and vice versa, are all not what they had been. The same is true for Iraq’s relationship with its neighbors, especially Iran. Syria, as a result of the revolution, especially because of its counter-revolution, has also become another country. The population’s make-up has changed significantly. Sectarian relationships in the inside have changed as well. The class map and the distribution of age groups are qualitatively different, not to mention what the press refers to as Syria’s transformation from a regional player into a playground brimming with occupiers and interventions of every kind.
Lebanon, for its part, lost its mediatory role. It lost its middle class and is starting to lose its educated cadres and youths’ energy. Ports and banks have gone from having been symbols of expansion to becoming symbols of contraction, even death. Inter-sectarian relationships are at a boiling point, and the sectarian system is decaying without an alternative appearing on the horizon. The Arab window into modernity has almost totally closed.
Furthermore, the roles of other pillars of contemporary Arab life have changed:
Concerning the realms of religion, ideas, and values, the Sunni Shiite conflict has blown up in unprecedented fashion. Daesh arose, established a state spanning two countries, and then collapsed. The way Islam is approached, as the majority’s religion and the source for policies and senses of belonging, has changed from what it had previously been. Regarding the economy, a change is noticeable in the role of oil, which had played a massive role, negative and positive, over the past five decades. The maps of social classes throughout the Levant had been drawn by oil, or it had a significant impact on them. Both conservative and revolutionary inclinations profited from it.
When it comes to its strategic position, lying between Asia, Africa, and Europe, was one of the region’s primary sources of importance. Today, as the West moves towards Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East loses much of its foundational importance.
Why, amid all of these sweeping changes, which affect tens of millions, is the changed meaning of the Palestinian question met with bewilderment, especially since this change was most expected, with very well-known developments paving the way for it.
After the War of 1967, “restoration of the occupied territories” replaced “the liberation of Palestine.” In 1970, the civil war broke out in Jordan. In 1973, the limits of an Arab war effort became apparent. In 1974, the Palestinian National Council adopted the “Ten Points Program” and called for establishing national authority over any liberated piece of Palestinian land. In 1975, the Lebanese war erupted. In 1978-79, by signing the Camp David Treaty, Egypt left the conflict. In 1982, Lebanon was alone when it was invaded. Throughout the 1980s, Hafez al-Assad pursued his war of eradication against the Palestine Liberation Organization. In 1990-91, because of the PLO’s support for Saddam Hussein’s Kuwait invasion, the Palestinians and the Gulf states became estranged. At the same time, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its camp dried up international support sources. In 1993, the PLO signed the Oslo Accords. In 1994, Jordan signed the Wadi Araba Treaty. With the collapse of Arafat and Barak’s settlement, the second intifada, which chose the path of violence unlike the first intifada, broke out in 2000, and the Israelis destroyed most of what the authority built. In 2007, infighting preceded the split between the West Bank and Gaza, which witnessed three successive wars (2008, 2012, and 2014) that seemed to concern only Gaza and Israel. In the meantime, two Palestinian models were unfolding: a one corrupt in the West Bank and a backward model in the Gaza Strip. The two undermined the cause, each in its own way. The Arab revolutions began to follow, revealing the national concerns of the countries in which they erupted, which the Palestinian cause was either irrelevant to or had little connection to them.
In parallel, the Iranian’s confiscation of the Palestinian cause persisted unrestrained, climaxing with the 2006 War, an Iranian – Israeli war fought by Lebanese tools on Lebanese territory. For many, Iran’s expansion pushed Israel’s danger into a secondary or tertiary category.
During this long journey, the Palestinians remained the oppressed, while many factions, most of all but not only Israel, were the oppressors. whatever the case, in the end, this was what in reality happened.
A reasonable person following the developments of this perpetual decline, to remain reasonable, will not be taken by surprise. Of course, one would feel sad. As for those who are astonished, they themselves are astonishing.
'
Trump and Biden Make Too Big a Deal of TikTok
Stephen Carter/Bloomberg/September 27/2020
We’re still waiting to see what’s going to happen to the TikTok deal — at the moment, the ball’s in Beijing’s court — but as China ponders, I’d like to offer three reasons that the whole contretemps may be less serious than it appears:
1. The US isn’t exactly the superstar of data protection. The reason there’s a controversy over TikTok at all is because of fears by national security experts that ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns the wildly popular video-sharing platform, might be compelled to turn over user data to the Chinese government. Hence President Donald Trump’s determination to force ByteDance to sell the US operations of the app to a US company. Should the new agreement be approved, a new company, TikTok Global, would run operations in the US. Although ByteDance would retain an 80% stake (with the rest split between Oracle and Walmart), user data would be hosted by Oracle’s cloud services and, in theory, be unavailable to the Chinese parent company.
In other words, we reduce the risk by keeping the data on American shores.
Well, let’s think about that for a minute. Grant for the sake of argument that the existing ownership structure of TikTok does indeed risk the transfer of private data to the hands of the Beijing regime. The notion that the deal under review will prevent this by keeping the data resident in a particular physical place, although it might play well politically, seems a little ... naive. Tech companies don’t locate their server farms according to national borders. That a company is headquartered in the US doesn’t mean that the data storage is physically in any particular country — or that hackers from other countries couldn’t get at it.
But put that aside. Just about every US tech company, no matter how careful, has faced bad publicity due to mishandled data. I have nothing against Oracle, but for the sake of fairness, one is forced to note that, like the rest, it’s had its lapses. Lots of privacy experts take the view that once personal information is sent into the digital world, privacy is gone.
Granted, there’s a world of difference between a firm that does its best to preserve private information but sometimes errs, and one that shares the information freely with government agencies. But even the US government usually find a way to access data it really wants. Often this is via secret warrants — warrants of whose existence the user is never aware. (Tech firms have accused the government of overusing secret warrants.) Sometimes, companies willingly share information with law enforcement agencies, even in the absence of probable cause. Sometimes government agencies simply purchase user data from commercial vendors. And with successive administrations asking tech companies to build backdoors into their services, the situation isn’t going to get better. This isn’t to equate Washington and Beijing. But in our imperfect world, even the good guys need watching. In part because ...
2. I’m not saying the TikTok fight is just geopolitics in disguise, but if it is, it’s not going to work. Disapproval of China among Americans is at an all-time high. In particular, there’s been a sharp upturn in negative views since last year. Much of this is due to the way Beijing bungled its handling of the pandemic in its early stages, but that’s not the only reason: Disapproval has been high for a while. All of which is to say that this is a tempting moment for politicians of both parties to stage Cold War-style antics directed at the Communist regime. Democratic nominee Joe Biden has called TikTok “a matter of genuine concern,” about as close as he can come to saying he agrees with Trump, and observers expect a Biden administration would continue efforts to rein in the app.
But the effort to build a firewall around China won’t work.
For one thing, young Americans disapprove of China a lot less than their elders do. Although I haven’t found data on views of the particular young Americans who are obsessed with TikTok, common sense suggests they’re less negative still. This matters, because TikTok users don’t only trend young — they trend extremely young. In the US, nearly two-thirds of regular users are between 10 and 24 years old. Some 30% are teenagers. I suspect that most of these young people find the battle over ByteDance bewildering.
Which leads us to ...
3. TikTok is the obsession of the moment, but there will be lots of other moments.
Since its 2017 release, TikTok has taken the world by storm. Early in 2019, the video sharing app became the most widely downloaded app in the world, measured by downloads from app stores. Okay, that’s impressive. But I’m old enough to remember 2006, when MySpace was the biggest website in the US. That same year, Facebook’s announcement that people other than students would be allowed onto its site was greeted with a yawn — along with a warning that the decision could wreck the still-fragile social network. I’m not predicting the end of any particular site. I’m just saying that the rule of creative destruction holds online just as it does everywhere else. This is particularly true in a world where many people are constantly looking for the next big thing. And plenty of competitors are waiting in the wings. One candidate is Byte, launched in January by Dom Hofmann, best known for bringing us the (alas!) now-defunct Vine, the platform that popularized video sharing, later killed by its corporate masters at Twitter. (Requiescat in pace.) Byte limits videos to six seconds, but, unlike TikTok, focuses on helping popular users monetize their success. Then there’s Triller, which is backed by a who’s who of music industry stars. Since the administration began its campaign against TikTok, Triller downloads have exploded. TikTok’s most popular “creator,” who has an astonishing 87 million followers, has already jumped to the rival platform. (In August, Trump joined Triller too.). Okay, these happen to be American companies. But they don’t have to be. There’s entrepreneurial talent everywhere, meaning that the next big thing can come from anywhere ... including the nation’s adversaries. Maybe in politics that’s a bug. But for those who believe in free markets and free people, it’s a feature.

Amy Coney Barrett Deserves to Be on the Supreme Court
Noah Feldman/Bloomberg/September 27/2020
Like many other liberals, I’m devastated by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, which opened the way for President Donald Trump to nominate a third Supreme Court justice in his first term. And I’m revolted by the hypocrisy of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s willingness to confirm Trump’s nominee after refusing to even allow a vote on Judge Merrick Garland. Yet these political judgments need to be distinguished from a separate question: what to think about Judge Amy Coney Barrett, whom Trump has told associates he plans to nominate. And here I want to be extremely clear. Regardless of what you or I may think of the circumstances of this nomination, Barrett is highly qualified to serve on the Supreme Court.
I disagree with much of her judicial philosophy and expect to disagree with many, maybe even most of her future votes and opinions. Yet despite this disagreement, I know her to be a brilliant and conscientious lawyer who will analyze and decide cases in good faith, applying the jurisprudential principles to which she is committed. Those are the basic criteria for being a good justice. Barrett meets and exceeds them.
I got to know Barrett more than 20 years ago when we clerked at the Supreme Court during the 1998-99 term. Of the thirty-some clerks that year, all of whom had graduated at the top of their law school classes and done prestigious appellate clerkships before coming to work at the court, Barrett stood out. Measured subjectively and unscientifically by pure legal acumen, she was one of the two strongest lawyers. The other was Jenny Martinez, now dean of the Stanford Law School.
When assigned to work on an extremely complex, difficult case, especially one involving a hard-to-comprehend statutory scheme, I would first go to Barrett to explain it to me. Then I would go to Martinez to tell me what I should think about it. Barrett, a textualist who was working for a textualist, Justice Antonin Scalia, had the ability to bring logic and order to disorder and complexity. You can’t be a good textualist without that, since textualism insists that the law can be understood without reference to legislative history or the aims and context of the statute.
Martinez had the special skill of connecting the tangle of complex strands to a sensible statutory purpose. She clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer, who also believes in pragmatically engaging the question of what a statute is actually trying to do in order to interpret it.
In a world where merit counts, Barrett and Martinez would both be recognized as worthy of serving on the Supreme Court. If a Democratic president with the support of a Democratic Senate asked me to recommend a current law professor for the bench, Martinez would be on my short list.
But a Republican is president, and the Senate is Republican. Elections have consequences, and so do justices’ decisions about when or whether to retire. Trump is almost certainly going to get his pick confirmed.
Given that reality, it is better for the republic to have a principled, brilliant lawyer on the bench than a weaker candidate. That’s Barrett.
To add to her merits, Barrett is a sincere, lovely person. I never heard her utter a word that wasn’t thoughtful and kind — including in the heat of real disagreement about important subjects. She will be an ideal colleague. I don’t really believe in “judicial temperament,” because some of the greatest justices were irascible, difficult and mercurial. But if you do believe in an ideal judicial temperament of calm and decorum, rest assured that Barrett has it.
This combination of smart and nice will be scary for liberals. Her old boss, Scalia, did not have the ideal judicial temperament (too much personality, a wicked sense of humor) and managed over the years to alienate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, which may conceivably have helped produce more liberal outcomes as she moved to the left.
Barrett is also a profoundly conservative thinker and a deeply committed Catholic. What of it? Constitutional interpretation draws on the full resources of the human mind. These beliefs should not be treated as disqualifying.
Some might argue that you should want your probable intellectual opponent on the court to be the weakest possible, to help you win. But the Supreme Court is not and should not be a battlefield of winner-take-all political or ideological division.
It would be naïve to deny that there is plenty of politics in constitutional interpretation. There are winners and losers every time the justices take a stance on an important issue of law. Nevertheless, the institutional purpose of the Supreme Court is to find a resolution of political conflicts through reason, interpretation, argument and vote-casting, not pure power politics. It follows that the social purpose of the Supreme Court is best served when justices on all sides of the issues make the strongest possible arguments, and do so in a way that facilitates debate and conversation.
We have a Supreme Court nominee who is a brilliant lawyer, a genuine and good person — and someone who holds views about how to interpret the law that I think are wrong and, in certain respects, misguided. I hope the senators at her hearing treat her with respect.
And when she is confirmed, I am going to accept it as the consequence of the constitutional rules we have and the choices we collectively and individually have made. And I’m going to be confident that Barrett is going to be a good justice, maybe even a great one — even if I disagree with her all the way.

America is Going to Choke Huawei
Chris Miller/The New York Times/September 27/2020
China “plans to dominate the world’s digital infrastructure,” Attorney General William Barr has declared. A “truly Orwellian surveillance state” is just around the corner, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo argues. In fields from facial recognition to artificial intelligence to 5G telecom technology, it often seems like China has already become the world’s technology superpower.
But dig deeper and China’s position looks weaker. Take Huawei, which the Trump administration argues exemplifies Beijing’s unfair state subsidies and corporate espionage. The company also represents the best of Chinese tech: It has capable products at competitive prices, and its smartphones and 5G equipment have found willing customers worldwide.
Huawei also illustrates China’s deep dependence on foreign — especially American — technology. As of Sept. 15, new Commerce Department regulations make it almost impossible for any company to sell Huawei computer chips without a license from the American government. But China cannot produce most of the essential advanced chips on its own. Beijing’s reliance on American tech demonstrates the United States’ extraordinary economic power — and how America’s slipping technological edge puts this power at risk.
Today’s advanced computer chips cannot be designed or manufactured without American tech. American firms like Cadence Design Systems and Lam Research make products that are all but irreplaceable. By cutting off access to these products and the chips they produce, the Commerce Department can halt the operations of almost any tech company worldwide.
Even companies outside the United States therefore must follow these new rules. ASML, a Netherlands-based company that is the world’s only maker of the most advanced photolithography machines that use particles of light to carve circuits onto silicon wafers, has stopped selling its most advanced equipment to China. TSMC of Taiwan, one of the world’s leading producers of semiconductors, has said it will halt production for Huawei after the Commerce Department regulations take force.
Access to chips is crucial to any tech company — and Huawei has admitted it is already running out. Without chips, “What products can we still make?,” a Huawei employee has asked. The answer: not much. Fearing further pressure from the United States and seeing little hope for the future, some of Huawei’s top employees have already left the company. Huawei insists that it will soldier on. But it is hard to see how the company’s main products — like 5G equipment, network gear, smartphones and cloud computing services — will survive without access to chips.
China’s leading chip manufacturer, SMIC, is scrambling to build chips as small as 40 nanometers — billionths of a meter — without American technology. This might sound small, but today’s cutting edge is five nanometers. Even if China’s race to “de-Americanize” production at 40 nanometers succeeds, it will have built a chip as cutting edge as a flip phone.
Much as Beijing would like to, hardly any industry analysts expect China to wean itself off American tech soon. There’s just no way to create an entire industry from scratch, especially one that requires producing at the scale of nanometers. Beijing has no choice but to buy an estimated $300 billion worth of chips from abroad this year, more than it spends on any other product.
Huawei’s digital decapitation is a shocking display of American power. At the whim of the American president, any other Chinese tech company could suffer such a fate. Imagine if a foreign power could do the same to Google or Amazon.
But Washington’s leverage says more about America’s past success than its future trajectory. The United States is at the center of the global chip industry because of many years of investment in research and development, innovation that produced new products and vast profits — and powerful tools to use against geopolitical rivals. When it comes to Huawei, the Trump administration is cashing in chips that it took decades of research and development to accumulate.
Look into the future and the American position seems less promising. The United States’ technology lead is waning. The country remains dominant in chip design but has lost the lead in manufacturing to Taiwan. There are risks in chip design, too. Huawei’s design subsidiary HiSilicon had made serious strides in smartphone processors even before the new American restrictions.
Moreover, Washington’s weaponization of supply chains gives allies and adversaries alike a powerful reason to reduce their reliance on American products. Beijing has set up a $29 billion fund to support domestic chip technology. SMIC raised $7.6 billion in July. With funding like this, China is certain to make progress. And American allies like Taiwan and South Korea have their own programs to boost chip development.
This makes it all the more important that the United States not misinterpret the lessons from its pressure on Huawei. Washington has shown that it knows how to wield its technological power. But it is one thing to use power and another to accumulate it. The campaign against Huawei works only because other countries rely on American technology. Now they have an incentive to diversify. And the American position is no longer as unassailable as it once was. If the United States’ technological edge keeps slipping, the strangulation of Huawei could mark the peak of American power over the world’s tech companies.

Urban Forests for a Moderate Climate
Najib Saab/Asharq Al Awsat/September 27/2020
Heat waves sweeping across the globe have bigger effect in cities. Buildings of concrete and steel trap hot air and block circulation, while dark asphalt streets and stone pavements retain heat and cover natural soil, wiping trees and plant cover. Car engines also contribute to rising temperatures, alongside air conditioners, which cool on the inside while expelling hot air outside. All this causes hot air to be retained and "thermal islands" to develop in specific spots within cities. The temperature in these areas may exceed 10 degrees of what it is outside the city limits, or even in open and green spaces inside the city itself.
The "thermal islands" phenomenon in cities is not new. Rather, it has become a constant fact since cities began to expand, with taller buildings and crowded streets. What is new is that the increasing heat waves caused by climate change are making the situation worse.
High temperatures above normal human tolerance levels cause serious health problems, especially for patients with heart disease, diabetes and respiratory system problems. A third of the world's population is currently exposed to heat above normal levels on about 20 days per year. It is projected that half of the world's population will be exposed to risk due to heat waves by the end of the century.
Many cities, from Paris and London in Europe to Washington and Seattle in the United States, have opted to tackle heat waves by planting trees. It is traditional knowledge that trees serve as the lungs of the earth, as they absorb carbon dioxide and emit oxygen. They also act as a filter that extracts sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, and captures fine particulates with pollutants attached to them. But trees also have a direct effect on reducing heat in streets and buildings, as they emit moisture into the air and their shade reduces direct sunlight on walls and windows. This reduces the need for air conditioning, which in turn cuts harmful emissions.
This is where the idea of planting urban forests and increasing tree planting on road sides originated, not only for visual landscaping, but mainly for environmental goals. In addition to afforestation in public urban areas, some municipalities, as in the Netherlands, have launched programs to encourage residents to establish home forests, whose size and type of trees are determined according to the size and location of the garden. Local municipalities support these programs by offering free technical advice, seedlings and tax incentives.
Because of lack of space, several cities encourage the planting of trees on rooftops, as in Geneva, where some roofs look like hanging forests. There are also programs for growing certain types of vegetation on rooftops to create thermal insulation.
However, planners have to recognize that trees are living entities, not statues of steel, concrete and stone, which need constant care and adequate conditions to thrive and survive. Trees, like every living entity, are subject to disease and death. Also, trees often require many years to reach full growth before they can effectively tackle high temperatures, with the maturity period of some tree species exceeding 20-30 years. Therefore, cities that have initiated urban forestry programs often implement fast-track afforestation projects, in order to obtain benefits before it is too late.
One of the important factors for the success of urban forests is the selection of plant species appropriate to the natural conditions in a specified location, including soil, water and climate. During the past decades, many types of alien trees have been planted in the streets of Arab cities, which are not compatible with the local conditions, as they need continuous irrigation with large quantities of water, and threaten the local plant species.
However, this practice has been largely abandoned, and plants imported from regions with different climatic conditions have been replaced by more suitable ones. This does not mean restricting to local plants, as some imported tree species may be compatible with the local environment and more effective in tolerating urban conditions, with more capacity to absorb pollutants and provide shade to reduce heat. This depends on the shape and quality of the leaves. Researchers in China have found, for example, that conifers, such as pine trees, are better for absorbing pollutants in cities, if natural conditions allow them to grow, while trees with bigger leaves provide more shade.
Some Arab cities, where it is possible to grow trees with little care, due to their moderate climate and rainfall, such as Beirut, Damascus and Amman, have lost a large part of the green cover due to random urban expansion. In fact, green spaces have diminished in almost all cities of the Levant and North Africa, which have a traditionally moderate climate, due to urban expansion. This threatens the quality of life there, in addition to posing a major threat to human health, in the absence of the vegetation cover required to combat air pollution and the expansion of thermal islands.
In contrast, most cities in desert Arabian Gulf countries put a great effort into greening cities and afforestation. Perhaps Abu Dhabi is one of the most prominent examples of a successful urban afforestation program, which was launched by the founder of the state, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, some decades ago, and continued after his death. Whereas in the past desalinated seawater was used to irrigate the trees, which is a very costly process, the irrigation of forests and road trees in Abu Dhabi now mostly depends on treated wastewater.
Sheikh Zayed had sharp vision, based on innate wisdom and a deep-rooted sense of belonging to nature and the need to respect and protect it. I remember asking him in 1997, while conducting a special interview for Environment and Development magazine, why he opted to grow forests in the desert and inside a barren city. He replied that he was doing this to curb the rise in temperatures, and for people and animals to enjoy the green cover. Sheikh Zayed himself was behind the cultivation of palm trees bearing dates in public areas of Abu Dhabi, not only to decorate and preserve nature, but also to make people benefit from the fruits. Now, more than ever, all Arab cities are called upon to launch major programs to grow urban forests, and to use treated wastewater for irrigation. This is an indispensable effort to adapt to climate change, and to create green spaces where people can enjoy the green cover.

Palestinians must first make peace with themselves
Yossi Mekelberg/Arab News/September 27/ 2020
There is a real risk that both Palestinians and Israelis are drawing the wrong conclusions about how the historically ground-breaking normalization agreements between the UAE and Bahrain and Israel are affecting relations between them.
In an ideal world, in other words one in which Israel is not ruled by nationalist-populists such as Benjamin Netanyahu, it should have given the Jewish state an incentive to embark on an honest and courageous peace initiative with the Palestinians.
Don’t hold your breath, however, since the view of Netanyahu and his right-wing allies is one of complacency, with no sense of urgency to change the status quo with the Palestinians. Netanyahu is not the one to seize the moment and do what would not only be strategically forward looking for Israel, Palestine and the region, but also a morally decent move. After all, peace with the Palestinians would not be a favor to them or any other international actors, but a vital Israeli interest.
Setting aside the Israeli calculus, there is a Palestinian one that for now seems to be mainly driven by anger and bitterness. Nevertheless, closer analysis may suggest that recent events are giving the Palestinians an opportunity to take stock and to recognize that the world and the region have redefined their priorities and it is now time to reconfigure and re-strategize.
Rightly or wrongly, as a consequence of international fatigue with the deadlocked peace process, the changing set of priorities regionally and internationally over the past few years, and especially in recent months with a pandemic engulfing the world, the Israeli–Palestinian issue is not one that the international community either prioritizes or believes it can have a positive impact on. Notwithstanding international factors, the divisions and disarray in Palestinian politics are also deterring any international initiative, playing into the hands of those in Israel and their allies abroad who would like to see the occupation of the West Bank and permanent control via blockade of the Gaza Strip.
If anything, the new normalization agreements, and even more strikingly the enthusiasm of the signatories to move full steam ahead into cooperation on a wide range of issues, must ring the bells of change in Ramallah, Gaza and the Palestinian diaspora.
A Palestinian government that united and had a mandate from its people could re-engage with the international community and more powerfully make the case against the entrenchment and cruelty of the occupation.
Beyond their expressions of disappointment, the onus is now on the divided Palestinian leadership and polity to first and foremost find a way to bring together all the main factions in the West Bank and Gaza, chiefly the Fatah and Hamas movements, and in the PLO, to formulate a common platform and put aside their differences. Their recent meeting and agreement on “unified field leadership” may be step toward such a unity of purpose, but for now the statements have been mainly declarations of defiance and “comprehensive popular resistance,” rather than of formulating a unity of governance, purpose and strategy to achieve it.
The talk of a unity government is unrealistic and unnecessary; instead the first step should be to restart the political process that would enable the Palestinians to elect for the first time in more than 15 years their president, and in more than 14 years their representatives on the Palestinian Legislative Council, and to also reform the PLO. A number of previous agreements between Fatah and Hamas set elections as an objective, but neither side was keen on them, deterred by the unflattering opinion polls and so content to stick with the status quo.
If the Palestinian polity would like to regain the trust of its own people and the active support of sympathetic elements in the international community, fair and free elections must be the first step. Those politicians should also be listening to the younger generation and empowering and encouraging them to be part of the political system. Without these changes, the desperately needed and critical mass support for the Palestinian leadership at home and abroad, and belief in the just cause of Palestinian self-determination and independence, will not materialize.
While some advocate a return to the armed struggle, there is no real appetite for this in either the West Bank or Gaza, and from past experience, let alone the current international environment, it is unlikely to achieve anything tangible beyond more suffering and misery. But it is not beyond the realm of possibility that certain elements in Palestinian society will conclude that this is the only way left open to them to try and break the deadlock with Israel, to attract attention to their predicament, or even just as an expression of sheer frustration.
However, a Palestinian government that united and had a mandate from its people could re-engage with the international community and more powerfully make the case against the entrenchment and cruelty of the occupation. Sympathy with the Palestinians’ just cause has not evaporated, whether in the Gulf, in the EU or elsewhere, but more than ever those actors see no dividends from investing time and resources in a failed peace process or a divided Palestinian society. It is for the Palestinians, then, to build on the normalization agreements’ success in preventing their annexation by Israel, and to mobilize the Gulf states to play a proactive role in bringing a just solution to the conflict with Israel, on the basis of presenting a realistic, constructive and workable path toward peace, in accordance with UN resolutions and international law.
The responsibility then would be on Israel to respond in kind, and to prove to those who so courageously extended the hand of peace that this is an incentive to retract the occupation, not perpetuate it, and to move toward resolving the conflict with the Palestinians. At this historical juncture, what is required of the Palestinians is to first make peace among themselves and then exploit the new regional developments to advance their cause.
*Yossi Mekelberg is professor of international relations at Regent’s University London, where he is head of the International Relations and Social Sciences Program. He is also an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. He is a regular contributor to the international written and electronic media. Twitter: @YMekelberg

Why climate change is back on the agenda
Cornelia Meyer/Arab News/September 27/ 2020
The coronavirus pandemic has pushed every other issue aside for the past six months, and for a while it even silenced young climate demonstrators, who moved their protests to the internet.
To be sure, there have been public protests since March, but they were about coronavirus measures (for and against); there were the Black Lives Matter (BML) demonstrations, a reaction to the death of George Floyd and other examples of police violence against African Americans, most recently when the officers who shot Breonna Taylor went relatively unpunished; and there were anti-BML demonstrations. Some of these protests were peaceful, some not. They were a reflection of polarized Western societies, and they all had one thing in common; they were a direct reaction to something that had happened there and then.
Climate change is different: It is not a one-time event highlighting a specific abuse. It is a bad state of affairs creeping up on us silently. A world under lockdown may have impeded the spread of the virus, but the earth has still been raging. The were floods, fires and hurricanes. Before mid-September, forest fires in California destroyed an area as large as that usually affected during the whole wildfire season. Climate change may be less immediate than the virus or societal injustice, but it is real nonetheless. In the long run it will kill more people than COVID-19 does; that may sound tasteless or macabre, but the truth often is.
Energized youth cannot be silenced for long. Last Friday students demonstrated in more than 3,500 locations worldwide, from Europe, to Asia, Africa and America, North and South. The most dramatic image was that of 18-year-old activist Mya-Rose Craig standing on an Arctic ice sheet to alert us to polar melting and rising sea levels.
There were 400 demonstrations in Germany, and 21,000 young people congregated in Berlin alone. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who started the movement, gathered her supporters in Stockholm.
In many places, the protest organizers prescribed masks and adhered to social distancing rules, which is more than can be said for other demonstrations since March, whatever the cause. The demonstrators were predominantly young, understandably so, since they will inherit this world and they want to live on an inhabitable planet. Their key demand was an end to burning fossil fuels by 2030, which is ambitious to say the least. Their slogan was “Not one degree more!”
It is easy to criticize young climate activists as too ambitious, but if the aims of the 2015 Paris Climate Accord are to be achieved, politicians will have to be persuaded to legislate for drastic measures.
It is easy to criticize young climate activists as too ambitious, but if the aims of the 2015 Paris Climate Accord are to be achieved, politicians will have to be persuaded to legislate for drastic measures. Paris limits the warming of the earth to 1.5°C over pre-industrial levels by the end of the century, and with current measures we are far from reaching this goal.
It is the job of the young to be audacious, just as it is the job of world leaders to put the demands into perspective. Seen through that prism, Thunberg and her supporters have achieved a lot in a little under three years.
Last year the climate change debate dominated elections in many European countries, with green parties making considerable headway. Policies have been influenced too, the “green deal” of European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen being an example.
It was a sign of the times when President Xi Jinping told the UN General Assembly that China’s carbon emissions would peak before 2030, and that it envisaged becoming carbon neutral by 2060. Xi’s plan may not have been ambitious enough, but it was a step in the right direction. Moreover, momentum is building, with China, the EU, Japan and California, and several other large US states, more or less signing from the same hymn sheet. In that sense the young demonstrators have achieved a lot.
COVID-19, however dire its effects, is a temporary distraction. We should not underestimate our young and their activism, and elected politicians in particular ignore them at their peril.
Are some of their demands extreme and unrealistic? That may be the case, but no movement ever achieved anything by being timid. We should expect the climate change agenda to become front and center again. The protest organizers may also learn from COVID-19 responses what maximum mobilization on a global scale requires.
It will be the job of their elders to put things into perspective and ensure that issues such as social justice, economic development in the Third World and post-COVID economic recovery are also taken into consideration, while trying to achieve climate change goals.
*Cornelia Meyer is a business consultant, macro-economist and energy expert. Twitter: @MeyerResources

Birth pains of our new multipolar world
Hafed Al-Ghwell/Arab News/September 27/ 2020
At what should have been a time to celebrate 75 years of relative world peace and serious introspection about critical failures, the 75th UN General Assembly was instead hijacked by bitter acrimony unpalatable at a forum of high-level diplomacy. Before this uncharacteristic trading of jabs between world leaders, a new reality was already settling in, with a unipolar world designed around Washington and buoyed by advanced industrial democracies giving way to an increasingly multipolar realignment.
Nations peripheral to the system of multilateral governance after the Second World War, such as China and India, are on the rise and actively seek to renegotiate where they stand. However, for supporters of the outgoing Pax Americana, changing realities are often seen as a challenge to be thwarted and not opportunities to advance greater liberal internationalism. They reject new forms of cooperation and inclusive coalitions built by and around economic and security interdependence, which often involve arriving at critical compromises even in the deepest trenches of bitter geopolitical or regional rivalry.
Doing so, however, has simply encouraged the rest of the world to seek alternative arrangements, which could risk the far-flung interests of those invested in maintaining the current order. In essence, they become accessories to the existing flawed global order’s accelerated decline as they continue fighting to defend it.
Fortunately, there are ways for a rules-based international order to survive the onslaught of calls for a return to the divided world of protectionism and insularity. The world must use the UN’s 75th birthday to begin a painful, much-needed transition. The next phase of 21st-century multilateralism is the redistribution of authority, collective leadership, ownership and cooperation based on pragmatic bargains, not all-or-nothing diktats.
It is unsurprising that most world leaders’ speeches, especially those from the Global South, share a common refrain, i.e. reforms of the institutions and organizations that prop up our current system of multilateral governance.
Proposals to expand the number of permanent and non-permanent seats on the Security Council are not an indictment of the UN’s most powerful decision-making body or a criticism of its increasing ineffectiveness. They should be seen as pleas to save the best aspects of post-1945 liberal internationalism that still remains the prism through which most countries conduct affairs or establish relationships beyond their borders. Indeed, the American-led efforts at Potsdam, Yalta, Tehran and Bretton Woods actually bore fruit where two centuries of wars and economic turmoil failed. The global landscape is now awash in an expansive array of stakeholders finding new ways to cooperate, bargain and coalesce around common goals and in service of mutual interests.
It would be the greatest folly and the harbinger of our undoing should we abandon 75 years of progress chasing after the familiar fractures of unipolarity, out of fear of the limitless possibilities in structured, rules-based global multilateralism.
So, what would future multilateralism even look like?
There are no grand alternatives, as flawed and selectively effective as it is, to our current system of multilateral governance. If anything, the alternative is chaos. Fortunately, as resistant as the Security Council remains to reforming itself, the “new normal” is already developing, from shared governance and leadership as seen in the highly adaptive G-groupings.
The biggest criticism of the Security Council is its inflexibility, which hampers effectiveness and risks sparking its own legitimacy crisis.
The biggest criticism of the Security Council is its inflexibility, which hampers effectiveness and risks sparking its own legitimacy crisis. The result is the formation of groups like the G20 and beyond, which emphasize the participation and inclusion of the developing world in a forum light on the pageantry of treaty-bound formalities.
Economic interdependence and trade will also be a lynchpin of future global multilateralism as long as the World Trade Organization is successfully reformed and retains its economic governance capacities. There is no denying that without political squabbling, reciprocity in trade has achieved significant progress in identifying and developing mutualities, resulting in increasing interdependence and economic specialization.
Such benefits of reciprocal bargaining can then spill over even more into arenas beyond trade, such as negotiating or deescalating cross-border areas of contention, from water resources to conservation areas.
Lastly, increased regionalization ought to lessen the “hegemon’s burden” of the West as increased participation and inter-connectedness has over-stretched existing governance bodies. Regional issues, such as political instability, economic woes, terrorism and transnational crime, have proven repeatedly that they exceed a single state's capacity to deal with effectively.
Additionally, long-term recovery and plans to build resilience into societies and economic systems to counter future pandemics have spared a scramble for regional multilateralism. While the international system appears to be crumbling under multiple crises and self-inflicted wounds, fast-paced realignments are occurring at the regional level in Asia and the Middle East. The future is shaping up to be one shared between global multilateralism’s set of universal norms, rules and principles, underpinned by regional commonalities.
It is tempting to argue that the multitude of crises and intensifying conflicts around the world are signs that the current system is done for and the lack of an alternative augurs a return to the familiar trappings of bilateralism and insularity.
However, the reality is different; the world is simply experiencing the birth pains of a revised system of multilateral governance — a process the advanced economies demurred on initiating, having rested on their laurels after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The rest of the world is not angling for a system of closed off blocs and insulated regions; only one that is inclusive, encourages participation of all stakeholders and leaves ample room for regions to formulate systems better designed or equipped to tackle their unique challenges.
Denying the emergent reality risks undoing 75 years of progress in establishing a rules-based order in which nearly 200 independent, sovereign nations can cooperate, trade, bargain and unite behind common goals. It is long past time for the world to advance to a more equitable order — one we can all look forward to celebrating when the UN turns 100.
*Hafed Al-Ghwell is a non-resident senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Institute at the John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He is also senior adviser at the international economic consultancy Maxwell Stamp and at the geopolitical risk advisory firm Oxford Analytica, a member of the Strategic Advisory Solutions International Group in Washington DC and a former adviser to the board of the World Bank Group. Twitter: @HafedAlGhwell

Pushing Back on Iraqi Militias: Weighing U.S. Options
Michael Knights/The Washington Institute/September 25/2020
Although halting the escalation of militia attacks on American personnel is crucial, simply evacuating the Baghdad embassy and downscaling the bilateral relationship would allow Iran to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
On September 20, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly warned the Iraqi government that unchecked militia attacks could spur the United States to shutter its embassy and launch powerful strikes on Iran-backed militia leaders. Since then, Iraqi officials and even some militia figures have scrambled to placate Washington, with various armed groups publicly distancing themselves from attacks on diplomatic facilities. At the same time, however, the warning shocked an embattled Iraqi government that had served up some powerful blows against Iranian proxies in recent weeks, including the September 17 arrest of suspected militia financier Bahaa Abdul-Hussein, who controls a multi-billion-dollar e-payment service.
The episode underlines the corrosive effect that even nonlethal militia harassment attacks can have on the bilateral relationship, an issue that the author has previously provided analysis and updates on in July, March, and February. Prior to the most recent incidents outlined in the list below, relations had been improving markedly, with Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi visiting Washington in August and the Trump administration agreeing to start reducing U.S. forces from 5,200 to a sustainable level of around 3,000. To defuse any tensions that may sprout from Pompeo’s stark warning, the next step is to agree on practical measures to reassure Washington that the Iraqi government is providing as much protection as it can realistically muster at this time—keeping in mind that not even the U.S. military could completely stop such attacks when it had 165,000 troops on the ground.
TALLYING RECENT MILITIA ATTACKS
The number and scope of operations against American, coalition, and Iraqi targets has expanded recently:
Logistical convoys. The U.S. embassy and coalition military forces rely on the import of many pieces of equipment and consumables, some of which are destined for disbursement to Iraqi security forces. Attacks on the Iraqi truck convoys that transport this materiel increased from 14 in the first quarter of 2020 to 27 in Q2 and 25 in Q3. The quality of these attacks has increased as well, including the use of passive infrared triggers for more accurate targeting and, in recent days, daisy-chained explosively formed penetrators (EFPs).
Foreign security details. On August 26, a roadside bomb damaged a UN World Food Programme vehicle in the operating area of an Iran-backed militia east of Mosul, wounding one occupant. On September 15, another roadside bomb exploded alongside a British embassy armored vehicle in Baghdad, causing no injuries. These attacks came almost a year after the last such bombings: a 2019 spate of militia attacks on oil company convoys in Basra.
Rockets and drones. U.S. targets suffered 27 rocket and drone attacks in Q3, higher than Q2 (11 attacks) and Q1 (19). No U.S. casualties were caused in this quarter’s attacks; the last U.S. fatalities occurred on March 11. Yet the most recent strikes have been more accurate, aimed to land inside the U.S. embassy grounds. On September 15, the embassy’s counter-rocket, artillery, and mortar (C-RAM) system destroyed a salvo of rockets projected to strike the complex. As for drones, one was found on a roof near the embassy on July 22, apparently readied for attack with a bomb equivalent to a medium (81-82 mm) mortar shell. On September 2, a similar combination was used to attack the G4S security company at Baghdad airport, striking very accurately but causing no casualties. Some armed groups have accused this U.S.-British company of providing intelligence that pinpointed the location of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and militia kingpin Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who were killed by a U.S. airstrike near the airport on January 3.
U.S. RESPONSE OPTIONS
The above review paints a picture of a very active Iran-backed militia threat that is evolving in worrisome ways. The United States does not want to go through another period like that seen in December-January, when its embassy was besieged, major new deployments had to be made to the region, and the risk of broader conflict with militias and Iran was quite real. The Trump administration understandably wants to break the current momentum, since the last time such a surge of attacks occurred, the results were the death of an American in December, U.S. airstrikes, mob attacks on the embassy, the forceful but risky decision to target Soleimani and Muhandis, and an Iraqi parliamentary motion to remove U.S. forces. Pompeo’s warning might also have been spurred by classified information.
Whatever its impetus, the U.S. threat to close the embassy is a very problematic policy option, notwithstanding its immediate utility in galvanizing Iraqi attention on militia issues. Shuttering the embassy is the exact outcome that every Iran-backed militia dreams of achieving. It would be a propaganda victory of epic proportions for Tehran and its proxies, undercutting all of the progress achieved in Iraq since Soleimani and Muhandis were killed. It would also represent an even more complete withdrawal from Iraq than the one undertaken by the Obama administration in 2011, which helped pave the way for al-Qaeda’s reemergence as the Islamic State and, later, militia control over broad swaths of the Iraqi state. Not only would all U.S. diplomatic and military operations in Iraq end, but all other coalition operations would cease as well given their dependence on the U.S. presence. Many foreign powers would likely mimic Washington’s full departure—except for Iran, Russia, and China. In no scenario would this outcome serve U.S. interests.
Washington should therefore avoid invoking such an extreme measure in the future, instead working with the Kadhimi government on other kinds of intensified response options. In particular, to better protect the embassy when U.S. threat warnings indicate impending attacks, Iraqi forces could temporarily close parts of the International Zone and reinforce protection there. Similar arrangements could be made for the airport and the main airport road under certain conditions. Although completely halting rocket fire is unrealistic anytime soon, the embassy was built to withstand such attacks and is protected by the potent C-RAM system, which the Iraqi government allows to operate over the capital despite the extreme noise and occasional stray shells it generates.
Moreover, if U.S. officials have specific intelligence about a new militia threat—say, the introduction of advanced precision rocket systems—they should share this data on condition that Iraq quickly mounts an operation against it. Prime Minister Kadhimi is still the titular head of the highly capable Iraqi National Intelligence Service, and partner nations regularly trust him and his inner circle (largely INIS personnel) with sensitive information.
If the U.S. government needs to see visible signs of Iraq pushing back on militias, Baghdad’s action should be purposeful in some broader sense than just placating Washington. Rather than goading Iraqi officials into an over-ambitious “rush to failure” (e.g., attempting a military takedown of a key militia), the smartest approach is to help them take back the International Zone. Incrementally removing militias from this key piece of real estate would be deeply symbolic on a national level and, more important, protect the most sensitive Iraqi, U.S., and coalition facilities. Gradually weeding thousands of militiamen and heavy weapons out of the zone would be highly confrontational, but at least it would be worth the risk—unlike arresting a few individual militia leaders, which would have limited impact. Kadhimi is already making many positive changes to the zone’s security arrangements with U.S. assistance, so the moment is ripe for a “neighborhood by neighborhood” effort to remove fighters and weapons. Washington should rally vocal support for such a move, not only among international players with embassies in the zone, but also among moderate Shia, secular, Kurdish, and Sunni political blocs in Iraq.
While waiting for these and other measures to be implemented, the embassy is quite capable of protecting itself, as it did during last December’s showdown. Moreover, the U.S. presence has been decreased and consolidated since then—it is now concentrated at six sites rather than fourteen, each with active defenses against missiles, rockets, and drones. This multi-billion-dollar investment gives brave American personnel the resilience to weather harassment fire when unavoidable, and although the protective umbrella does not extend to supply convoys, those transport functions are fulfilled by equally brave Iraqis, not Americans. Securing the International Zone and starting the campaign to push militias out would give the embassy even firmer ground to stand on as it helps Baghdad hold fast against Iranian threats.
*Michael Knights, a senior fellow with The Washington Institute, has conducted extensive on-the-ground research in Iraq alongside security forces and ministries. He is the coauthor (with Hamdi Malik and Aymenn Al-Tamimi) of the Institute study Honored, Not Contained: The Future of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces.