English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For June 03/2020
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

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Bible Quotations For today
The world hated me before it hated you & hated me before you. You do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world therefore the world hates you.
 Saint John 15/18-21:”‘If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, “Servants are not greater than their master.” If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. But they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.”

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on June 02-03/2021
Ministry of Health: 214 new infections, 5 deaths
STL Won't be Able to Operate beyond July without 'Immediate Funding'
Berri 'Awaiting Bassil's Answer' after Hariri 'Accepted' His Initiative
Presidency Press Office replies to “Future Movement” campaigns
Al Raei Visited President Aoun
Bassil Vows Action if 'Procrastination' Drags for More than a Week
Mustaqbal Lashes Out at Bassil, Rejects Possible National Dialogue Call
New U.N. Special Coordinator Joanna Wronecka Arrives in Lebanon
Lebanon’s medical sector set to get worse amid financial, political collapse
Caretaker PM calls on ‘Lebanon’s brothers and friends to stand by Lebanese’
Legislators Look to Include Fakhoury Daughters in Hearings on Budget, Aid, and Human Rights Discussions
Central Bank suspends decision allowing depositors to withdraw their dollar deposits at 3900 rate
Pour un nouveau pacte au Liban, lectures critiques et prospectives

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on June 02-03/2021
Israeli coalition led by Yair Lapid announces formation of new government
Iran Navy Ship Sinks after Fire in Gulf of Oman
Massive fire breaks out at oil refinery near Iran’s Tehran
Iran's largest naval ship sinks in Gulf of Oman after being engulfed in flames
Imported Iranian crude oil to US was from seized tankers: Sources
The truth about the Natanz explosion impact revealed
Israel faced multi-front war during recent Gaza conflict
Netanyahu Says Israel Would Risk 'Friction' with U.S. over Iran
Israel Destroys Syrian Army Post in Golan
Isaac Herzog elected 11th President of the State of Israel by wide margin
Labour figure elected Israeli president, midnight deadline for PM
Olmert: UAE leaders took daring steps for peace; Will Israel, Palestinians follow?
Kadhimi threatens to resign if he does not have a free hand to rein in pro-Iran militias
Palestinians declare UNRWA Gaza director ‘persona non grata’
Erdogan accuses US of supporting ‘terrorists’ against Turkey
Erdogan says Turkey could target refugee camp deep inside Iraq
Is Turkey trying to provoke a new conflict in Manbij, Syria?

Titles For The Latest The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on June 02-03/2021
Saudi Journalist: Israel Should Respond To Hamas Missiles By Attacking Iranian Targets In The Region/MEMRI/June 02/2021
China's Belt and Road Being Built with Forced Labor/Judith Bergman/Gatestone Institute/June 02/2021
The self-parody of Algeria’s leaders/Francis Ghiles/The Arab Weekly/June 02/2021
Who Started the Gaza War? America did/Tony Badran/The Tablet Magazine/June 02/2021

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on June 02-03/2021
Ministry of Health: 214 new infections, 5 deaths
NNA/June 02/2021
The Ministry of Public Health announced this Wednesday 214 new coronavirus infection cases, which raises the cumulative number of confirmed cases to 540844.
Five deaths have been recorded.

STL Won't be Able to Operate beyond July without 'Immediate Funding'
Agence France Presse/June 02/2021
The Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) on Wednesday said that it “regrets to announce that it is facing an unprecedented financial crisis,” warning that without “immediate funding,” it will not be able to operate beyond July 2021.
This will “impact its ability to fulfill its current mandate and conclude the judicial proceedings in the two cases currently before the Tribunal, the Ayyash et al. case (STL-11-01) and the Ayyash case (STL-18-10),” the court added in a statement, referring to the case of the Rafik Hariri murder and the case of the attacks on Elias Murr, Marwan Hamadeh and Georges Hawi. In filings submitted to the STL Judges, Registrar David Tolbert provided notice on the Tribunal’s financial situation so that the STL President, Pre Trial Judge, Appeals Chamber and Trial Chamber II may take any steps they deem necessary in relation to the conduct of matters of which they are seized. In order to meet his obligations to administer and service the STL, he stated that he has no choice but to activate a process of separation of staff in all four organs of the Tribunal in accordance with the Staff Regulations and Rules, and to initiate draw down activities related to the protection of witnesses and securing the Tribunal’s records, evidence and sensitive material. The STL Principals also formally notified the United Nations (U.N.) Secretary General Antonio Gutteres of the financial situation, which will result in the Tribunal’s inability to complete its work if no contributions are forthcoming prior to the end of July.The STL heavily relies on voluntary contributions from donor countries for 51 % of its budget, while Lebanon is responsible for 49%.
“Given the challenging circumstances generated by the global COVID-19 pandemic and the concerning situation in Lebanon, the STL had already drastically reduced its budget by approximately 37% for 2021 in comparison to previous years,” the STL said.
In March 2021, the U.N. granted a subvention of $15.5 million covering 75% of the Lebanese contribution towards the STL’s budget to support the continuation of the STL’s judicial work. “While the STL is grateful for the U.N.’s significant support, other indicated contributions remain outstanding and the STL falls short of funds to carry out its judicial functions,” it said. “The STL is highly distressed by the impact of this situation on the victims of the attacks within its jurisdiction, who placed their hope and trust in international criminal justice. For Lebanon, the international community and victims of terror, the STL’s proceedings establish important facts, recognize the harm suffered by the victims and Lebanese society, and send a strong message globally that terrorism will not go unpunished,” the court added. ”Despite taking significant cuts of staff and across the board reductions, without additional funding, the Tribunal will be forced to close its doors in the coming months, leaving important cases unfinished to the detriment of victims, the fight against impunity and the rule of law,” stated Registrar David Tolbert.
”The STL will continue its efforts to raise the funds required to carry on its important work and urgently calls upon the international community for its continued support,” the Tribunal added.
Lebanon is in the grip of a severe economic crisis, with the World Bank saying Tuesday that it was likely to rank among the world's worst financial crises since the mid-19th century. Born out of a U.N. Security Council resolution, the court last year sentenced Hizbullah suspect Salim Ayyash in absentia to life imprisonment over the huge 2005 truck bombing that killed ex-PM Rafik Hariri. The 57-year-old remains on the run, with Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah refusing to hand him over or to recognize the court's authority. The court said in April that Ayyash cannot appeal his life sentence unless he hands himself in. Prosecutors have appealed against the acquittal of three other suspects, also in absentia. Hariri, who had stepped down as Lebanon's prime minister in October 2004, was killed in the February 2005 suicide blast targeting his armored convoy. The attack killed 22 people and injured 226 others.
The STL is due in June to open a separate case against Ayyash over the attacks that targeted Murr, Hamadeh and Hawi.

Berri 'Awaiting Bassil's Answer' after Hariri 'Accepted' His Initiative
Naharnet/June 02/2021
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri has said that he is waiting for answers regarding his ongoing initiative to resolve the government formation deadlock. In remarks to Annahar newspaper published Wednesday, Berri said PM-designate Saad Hariri told him in the latest meeting that he agrees to the proposed initiative. “I’m waiting for the answer of (Free Patriotic Movement chief) Jebran Bassil,” the Speaker added. Berri’s remarks come after a war of words erupted between the Presidency and Hariri’s al-Mustaqbal Movement over the governmental crisis. Bassil has also said that Hariri only has a week to end his “procrastination” or face “pressuring steps” from the FPM.

Presidency Press Office replies to “Future Movement” campaigns
NNA/June 02/2021
The Presidency Press Office issued on Wednesday the following statement:
“In conjunction with ongoing contacts to form the new government, the Future movement continues its campaigns against the Presidency of the Republic in the person of, President General Michel Aoun. Campaigns by using phrases and descriptions that indicate the low level reached by the manners of those in charge of this movement. Perhaps the statement that was issued yesterday is the best evidence of the unprecedented descent into the political life to which these people descended to.
Over the past weeks, the Presidency of the Republic has opted not to engage in any controversy with the aforementioned movement, despite the delusions it was promoting and the rude expressions it used, in order to make room for the existing initiatives to address the government situation, especially after the position recently taken by the Parliament in response to the letter of the President, and the subsequent action taken by the Speaker of the Council, Mr. Nabih Berri, in cooperation with Hezbollah. However, what was included in yesterday's statement requires stopping at several points:
⁃ First: The continued evasion of Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri from assuming his responsibilities in forming a balanced and chartered government that takes into account competence, efficiency and achieves participation, constitutes a further violation of the Constitution and the National Accord Document, and reflects a clear and deliberate desire to disrupt the government formation process, according to what the President’s letter to the Parliament indicated.
Second: The claim that the President of the Republic is always trying, through his positions, to undermine the Taif Agreement and its constitutional effects, is a lie, slander and deception on public opinion, because the President of the Republic relied, in all his positions and choices, on the Constitution and applied it in content, and on the National Accord Document with all its inclusions. Whoever strikes the Taif Accord is the one who works to strike the constitution and manipulate clear texts in it.
⁃ Third: The PM-designate insists on trying to seize the authorities of the President of the Republic and his natural right to respect the constitution by resorting to practices that strike customs and principles, and inventing new rules in the formation of the government, explicitly violating the national balance upon which Lebanon was founded. And what is worse than all of this is that he imposes on the President of the Republic the consequences of what he is doing from violations and abuses that are incompatible with the due diligence in the framework of cooperation between the pillars of the state for the higher interest of Lebanon, and the parliamentary and popular confidence which must be provided to any government within the framework of the formation.
Fourth: The PM-designate and his movement deliberately blame the presidential term of President Michel Aoun for the economic, financial and social conditions that have devolved, at a time when everyone knows that the difficult financial conditions and debts inherited by this term are the “fruit” of practices of the PM-designate’s team and its mismanagement of state affairs since the post-Taif era until today. Therefore the "swamp" in which the Future Movement's statement claims that the country is mired in, is the product of a regime headed by the "Future" movement that controlled the country's capabilities. Fifth: The Future Movement, by firing in advance at the proposal to call for a national dialogue conference in Baabda Palace to address the situation in the country and try to find a solution to the current governmental crisis, wants to block any rescue attempt to form the government and carry out the necessary reforms which would secure the country's stability and prosperity.
Sixth: The Presidency of the Republic, which will not stoop to the low level in the vulgar language used or in the lies, deception and insolence adopted, will suffice with this amount of clarification, and will not say more in order to make room, once again, for the ongoing efforts to find positive solutions to the government crisis that it has created, hoping that these efforts will reach happy conclusions by forming a government as soon as possible to embark on the required reforms, as the suffering the Lebanese have endured as a result of the exercising system of the Future Movement is enough.
In conclusion, it must be emphasized that the Presidency of the Republic is today at a crossroads in confronting those who break the constitution or remain silent about everything that is happening, knowing that Lebanon's supreme interest transcends over all other considerations, and with it the interest of the people who are the source of all authorities.

Al Raei Visited President Aoun
LCCC/June 02 June/2021
The Maronite Patriarch Al Raei  paid today an official visit to Baabda presidential Palace and discussed with President numerous critical current issues and files in general and the government formation ongoing crisis in particular. After his meeting with Aoun he told the media facilities that he is so sad and disturbed from the low level of press fights between the political Lebanese parties and called for the urgent formation of a mini top notch leaders' government.

Bassil Vows Action if 'Procrastination' Drags for More than a Week
Naharnet/June 02/2021
Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil on Tuesday pledged to facilitate the cabinet formation process as he warned that the FPM would take “more pressuring steps” should the efforts to put together a new government drag for more than one week. “We will smother any new excuse not to form the government and it is clear that there is a fabrication of excuses in order not to form it,” Bassil said at a press conference that followed the weekly meeting of the FPM-led Strong Lebanon bloc. “We have repeatedly proven that we are not clinging to any portfolio, including the energy portfolio, but we support the distribution of portfolios equally among blocs and sects,” Bassil added. Vowing to do everything that can facilitate the formation of a new government, Bassil stressed that the FPM “wants a government” and that it wants it to be “led by PM-designate Saad Hariri.”
Moreover, the FPM chief said his movement “fully supports” Speaker Nabih Berri’s initiative and Hizbullah’s efforts that are aimed at speeding up the government’s formation. His remarks come hours after he met with mediators from Hizbullah and Berri’s Amal Movement. “The president is clear in not seeking any additional minister on top of the eight and he supports any mechanism or method for naming ministers who are not linked to him politically or in any way,” Bassil added, noting that such ministers could be “from the civil society or the Lebanese administration.”He added: “We have proposed many ideas that eventually lead to not affiliating the ministers with any side, and if someone insists on rejecting us, we will back the government’s formation and we will work so that the president accepts it.” “It will win the vote of confidence and we will not question its respect for the National Pact,” Bassil went on to say. He, however, warned that “should procrastination drag for more than a week,” the FPM would again ask the president to call for a national dialogue conference in Baabda. “Frankness around the table would certainly lead to expediting and facilitating formation, seeing as when things are clearly raised in everyone’s presence, tittle-tattle would stop and problems would be directly solved,” Bassil added. He also pledged that should Hariri decide to boycott such a dialogue, the FPM would “think of a new initiative and more pressuring steps regarding the formation process.”

Mustaqbal Lashes Out at Bassil, Rejects Possible National Dialogue Call
Naharnet/June 02/2021
Al-Mustaqbal Movement on Tuesday blasted Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil and described him as the country’s “shadow president.”
“Shadow president Jebran Bassil spares no opportunity to talk in the name of the president of the republic, confirming that the two men’s obstruction will comes before all the national efforts seeking to form a government,” the Movement said in a statement, hours after a press conference by Bassil. “Are we in the tenure of Jebran Bassil or in the tenure of Michel Aoun? Or has destiny thrown the Lebanese into a political quagmire run by Bassil and sponsored by Aoun?” Mustaqbal wondered. Moreover, it said that Bassil has an “illusion” that his “exploitation” of Aoun’s post will enable him to “pounce on the premiership, defeat it, usurp the designation and formation powers, and consolidate the grip on the executive authority.” “The fog of illusions has grown in Jebran’s head to the extent of believing that he can issue an arrest warrant for Lebanese leaders to come to the Baabda Palace under the national dialogue label,” the Movement added. “This will not happen, no matter how much you maneuver, make adventures and hide behind the president to float yourself and sit around a table that you to be a bridge for fulfilling your dreams and illusions,” Mustaqbal went on to say, addressing Bassil. It also accused Bassil of “leading the Lebanese into the hell that his president had promised.”Bassil had warned earlier in the day that “should procrastination drag for more than a week,” the FPM would ask Aoun to call for a national dialogue conference in Baabda. “Frankness around the table would certainly lead to expediting and facilitating formation, seeing as when things are clearly raised in everyone’s presence, tittle-tattle would stop and problems would be directly solved,” Bassil added. He also pledged that should PM-designate Saad Hariri decide to boycott such a dialogue, the FPM would “think of a new initiative and more pressuring steps regarding the formation process.”

New U.N. Special Coordinator Joanna Wronecka Arrives in Lebanon
Naharnet/June 02/2021
Joanna Wronecka, the newly appointed U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon, arrived Tuesday in Beirut to take up her new position.Wronecka, 63, will serve as the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General in Lebanon and Head of Mission of the United Nations Office of the Special Coordinator for Lebanon (UNSCOL). “It is an honor to serve with the United Nations in Lebanon,” said Wronecka upon her arrival at Beirut airport. “I regret that the country is passing through this very challenging time and my thoughts are with all those who are struggling under the burden of the overlapping crises facing their country,” she added. “I will work with all partners in Lebanon and the international community, and with the broader U.N. family, to support Lebanon and its people to strengthen democratic peace, security, stability and socio-economic development.”
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres announced the appointment of Wronecka (Poland) on April 1. She will succeed Slovakia's Jan Kubis, who recently took office as the new U.N. envoy for Libya. Since 2017, Wronecka had been in New York, where she was tasked by the U.N. General Assembly with reviving endless negotiations on reforming the Security Council to expand it to include new members. Wronecka brings over 25 years of experience in diplomacy, international security and Middle East affairs, having served since 2017 as the Permanent Representative of Poland to the United Nations, including during Poland’s membership in the Security Council (2018-2019), and as Under Secretary of State for Arab and African countries, development cooperation and Polish-United Nations relations at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland (2015-2017). She previously served as Head of the European Union Delegation to Jordan (2011-2015), Ambassador of Poland to Morocco (2005-2010) and Egypt (1999-2003) as well as non-resident Ambassador of Poland to Mauritania (2006-2010) and Sudan (2000-2003). Wronecka further served as the Director of the Secretariat of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland (2003-2005), Director of the Africa and Middle East Department (1998-1999) and Deputy Director of the United Nations Department at the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1996-1998). She holds a Ph.D. in Arabic philosophy and a master’s degree in Arabic philology from the University of Warsaw and she conducted research on Middle East and Islamic affairs at the Centre d’Etudes et de Documentation Economique et Juridique in Cairo and at the Polish Academy of Sciences.
She is fluent in Arabic, English, French and Polish.

Lebanon’s medical sector set to get worse amid financial, political collapse
Reuters/Published: 02 June ,2021
For Mira Hasbini, Lebanon’s disastrous financial crisis came down to something very basic: surgeons couldn’t find enough screws to fix her aged mother’s broken bones. After a fall that broke her elbow and leg, Hasbini’s mother Sahar was rushed to hospital where surgeons wanted to insert six screws. But there was a shortage. “It was a disaster, she was in a lot of pain,” Hasbini said. Her mother was put on morphine and the hospital, which Hasbini did not want to name, found the screws a day later. “Is it possible that a whole hospital doesn’t have even six screws in stock? What if someone has a car accident?”The financial crisis that is gripping Lebanon, described by the World Bank as one of the deepest depressions in modern history, is taking its toll on the healthcare system Hospitals are cutting down on elective surgeries to reserve what is left of anesthetics and other medical supplies for emergency procedures.
“We are concerned of course because you know hospitals can’t stop operating, at the end of the day when the life of the patient is in danger we have to do something,” Firass Abiad, who runs Beirut’s Rafik Hariri University hospital, told Reuters. “What is most worrying is that we don’t know until when this will continue, if you know you can plan but when you don’t there is a problem.”
The shortage is set to deepen as the government, which is politically paralyzed, deeply indebted and struggling to raise funds from potential donors, warned in early April that money for subsidies would run out in about two months. The country has been subsidizing fuel, wheat, medicine and other basic goods since last year, which costs the state around $6 billion a year. The program has drained reserves, which dipped from over $30 billion before the start of the crisis to around $15 billion in March. The Central Bank did not give an updated figure on reserves when asked by Reuters.
The bank said last week it would not dip into its mandatory reserves to pay around $1.3 billion it owes in medical supply costs, asking the government to find a solution to the shortage. Karim Gebara, who heads Lebanon’s Pharmaceutical Importers Assocation, says the situation is set to get even worse in June, with stocks completely depleted as suppliers abroad demand payment and cancel orders. “Lebanon owes the pharmaceutical exporters around $600 million,” Gebara said. “In other words all the medicine that we have received in the past six months and (which has been) consumed by Lebanese patients is not paid for,” he said. International firms, which sold the medicine to Lebanese importers based on their history of creditworthiness, can no longer wait after payments have been delayed for months. Lebanon’s caretaker health minister Hamad Hasan said this week the central bank needed to maintain its commitment to supporting the medical sector. He said he had visited the bank asking for the release of funds to no avail.The Central Bank did not respond to requests for comment.
Chronic conditions
Outside the hospitals, pharmacists say they haven’t been given their quotas in weeks and as pills for chronic conditions and over-the-counter medications are running out. Diabetes, heart and blood pressure patients, who need medication daily, had been forced to rely on alternatives to their usual pills, but in recent weeks the situation has worsened badly, says Mazen Bsat, a Beirut pharmacy owner. “Out of every ten patients we turn away maybe eight,” Bsat said, pointing to empty shelves behind him. Sleiman Haroun, who heads Lebanon’s syndicate of private hospitals, says the situation will get even worse if Lebanon’s political deadlock continues. Lebanon has been without a government, with the current one acting in a caretaker capacity, since shortly after the Aug. 4 chemical explosion that destroyed the port of Beirut and devastated downtown areas, killing hundreds. Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri has been at loggerheads with President Michel Aon for months over naming ministers, but only a new cabinet can enact reforms to unlock much needed foreign aid. “There is a grave political problem that needs a solution,” Harmon said. “Without external support the medical sector cannot stand back up on its feet.”

Caretaker PM calls on ‘Lebanon’s brothers and friends to stand by Lebanese’
Reuters/02 June ,2021
Lebanon is “in the heart of great danger”, and needs friendly countries to save it, the caretaker prime minister, Hassan Diab, said on Wednesday. “Either you save it now before it’s too late or else no regrets will help,” Diab said in a televised address. Lebanon is in the throes of a deep financial crisis that is posing the biggest threat to its stability since the 1975-1990 civil war. Diab has been steering the government in a caretaker role since his cabinet resigned in the aftermath of the Aug. 4 Beirut port blast, which devastated large swathes of the capital, killed hundreds of people and injured thousands. Prime Minister-desginate Saad al-Hariri has been at loggerheads with President Michel Aoun over naming cabinet ministers for ten months as the country hurtles towards economic collapse. A new government capable of introducing reforms is necessary to unlock much needed foreign aid. “I call on political powers to present concessions, and those will be small no matter how big they may seem, because that will alleviate the suffering of the Lebanese and stop this frightening path,” Diab said. Under a sectarian power-sharing system, Lebanon’s president must be a Maronite Christian and the prime minister a Sunni Muslim. Aoun, a Christian, is an ally of the Iran-backed Shiite movement Hezbollah, listed as a terrorist group by the United States. Hariri, a veteran Sunni politician, has said the only way out of Lebanon’s crisis is through mending relations with its Arab neighbors. Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, have been reluctant to offer aid to ease Beirut’s economic woes, keeping their distance while alarmed by the rising influence of Hezbollah.

Legislators Look to Include Fakhoury Daughters in Hearings on Budget, Aid, and Human Rights Discussions
WASHINGTON, DC/June 02/2021
 At the request of Congressional leaders, Amer Fakhoury Foundation (AFF) returned to the US Capitol on Wednesday, May 26, 2021, to expand previous discussions with legislators about US citizen Amer Fakhoury’s illegal detainment and torture in Lebanon and resulting death.
As with AFF’s previous meetings with elected and State Department officials, the delegation included Fakhoury’s four daughters, who co-founded the foundation in his name. In Washington, AFF met with Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Bob Menendez (D-NJ), and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). The delegation also met with the legislative staff of Representative Louie Gohmert (R-TX1). Between their recent DC visits, AFF met remotely with Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, and the Lebanon desk of the US State Department.
“Each time we share our father’s story, and those of people who continue to reach out to us from Lebanon, it resonates powerfully,” said Guila Fakhoury, President of AFF. While officials continue to work on identifying pathways for US government agencies and AFF to partner in delivering aid to those suffering under the Lebanese regime, AFF is currently delivering and expanding partnerships on the ground in Lebanon to meet the necessities of food, clean water, and medicine to those in need. Legislators have asked the Fakhoury’s to again return to Capitol Hill and participate in broader discussion groups and upcoming hearings. Those hearings are in planning but expected to include focus on Lebanese governmental and judicial corruption and human rights violations including illegal detention and torture.Officials shared that, with AFF’s help, these sessions will drive reviews under the Leahy and Magnitsky Acts as Congress looks at matters of US budgeting for civilian and military aid to Lebanon, accountability, and potential sanctions against Lebanese officials believed culpable or corrupt. “We look forward to our father’s voice, through us, being heard in Congress and pray these sessions to enable real change and justice for the Lebanese people,” Fakhoury concluded.

Central Bank suspends decision allowing depositors to withdraw their dollar deposits at 3900 rate
NNA/June 02/2021
The Central Bank of Lebanon issued on Wednesday a statement addressed to banks operating in Lebanon, in which it said: "Given that the Central Bank has been informed today of the decision of the State Consultative Council No. 213/2020-2021, 6/2/2021, it has decided to suspend circular. No. 151, which allows depositors to withdraw the money available in their dollar accounts at the rate of 3900 LBP to the dollar, based on the said decision."

Pour un nouveau pacte au Liban, lectures critiques et prospectives
June 02/2021
من أجل ميثاق جديد للبنان، قراءات نقدية وتوقعية، يصدر عن دار نشر لارماتان في باريس، حزيران ٢٠٢٠، مقاربة مقارنة للازمة اللبنانية الحاضرة على ضوء مئوية لبنان الكبير، اشترك بوضعها ٩ باحثين، ونسق أعمالها كل من مشير عون وشارل شرتوني وانطوان فليفل
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/99405/pour-un-nouveau-pacte-au-liban-lectures-critiques-et-prospectives-%d9%85%d9%86-%d8%a3%d8%ac%d9%84-%d9%85%d9%8a%d8%ab%d8%a7%d9%82-%d8%ac%d8%af%d9%8a%d8%af-%d9%84%d9%84%d8%a8%d9%86%d8%a7%d9%86%d8%8c/
Pour un Nouveau Pacte au Liban, Lectures critiques et prospectives**
Ce petit ouvrage offre des perspectives multiples afin de comprendre les enjeux de la crise libanaise au croisement du centenaire de la fondation de l’État du grand Liban (1920-2020). Fruit d’une collaboration entre plusieurs universitaires et chercheurs, ce recueil nous aide à partir d’une réflexion multidisciplinaire (histoire, philosophie politique, anthropologie théologique, sciences politiques, sociologie, ingénierie constitutionnelle) à comprendre la trame de ces crises enchevêtrées et aux intrications multiples et leurs incidences sur l’avenir du pays, les chances d’un règlement équilibré et sa viabilité dans un Moyen Orient éclaté, où les vides stratégiques prolifèrent de manière exponentielle et rendent impossible la restructuration sur des bases étatiques, et renvoient aux émiettements ethno-politiques et aux verrouillages de l’Umma islamique et ses mandatures vicariales.
Le Liban fait face à des défis qui remettent en question sa légitimité nationale, ses consensus normatif et institutionnel et sa stabilité au sein d’une région qui perdu ses ancrages au profit des nihilismes islamistes, des scénarios de chaos institutionnalisé, et des géopolitiques délétères. Les crises de nature systémique que vit le pays requièrent une approche élaborée qui s’organise à partir d’une plateforme de réformes où s’articulent la culture politique, l’ingénierie institutionnelle, et les stratégies réformistes intersectorielles. Le Liban aux prises avec des politiques de subversion concurrentes a besoin de négocier ses chances de stabilisation aux interstices des émiettements conjugués, ceux de l’intérieur et de l’extérieur, des dislocations structurelles d’un État mis en coupe réglée par les logiques patrimoniales, les intérêts oligarchiques et les instrumentalisations clientèlistes à géométrie variable.
Face à ces défis ardus et aux facteurs de complications induits par les verrouillages oligarchiques, les politiques rentières, les politiques de subversion et les conflits emboîtés, les observateurs de la scène politique libanaise, essayent de discerner les opportunités d’une politique de transition qui mettrait en place une solution holistique où les diverses variables normative, stratégique, géopolitique, institutionnelle, socio-économique et culturelle sont récapitulées dans le cadre d’une démarche irénique qui mettrait fin à cette succession ininterrompue de crises qui s’inscrivent dans la longue durée, et au prix d’une exaspération qui finit par s’installer au cœur d’une psyché collective qui naît et meurt avec la seule évidence des guerres alternées, des trêves temporaires et des incertitudes qui en font une sorte de fatum dont on devrait s’accommoder tant qu’on vit au Liban. L’internationalisation du conflit est inévitable afin de mettre fin aux politiques de subversion concurrentes (iranienne, turque, islamiste…), aux surdéterminations conflictuelles liées aux éclatements d’un ordre régional en pleine décomposition et ses effets métastatiques continus, et donner lieu à des négociations axées sur une solution fédérale et un statut de neutralité qui aideraient à résoudre les différends politiques, les apories institutionnelles et maîtriser les aléas d’une dynamique conflictuelle extravertie qui se nourrit de manière alternée des conflits d’une région sans repères et sans gravité.
* Les articles sont classés en ordre logique qui permet d’avancer de manière séquencée et progressive afin de comprendre les enjeux de ce conflit et ses articulations multiples ( politique, philosophique, historique, ingénierie constitutionnelle, sociologique, histoire des idées …. ).
Sommaire:
-Charles Chartouni, Le Liban et la fin des mythes, Esquisses de sociologie critique et de politiques alternatives.
-Mouchir Aoun, Fondement anthropologique du fédéralisme culturel.
-Hyam Mallat, Le Liban-Performance de l’Histoire et infirmités des politiques.
– Antoine Hokayem, Le Grand Liban, cent ans d’existence.
-François Boustani, Grand Liban, quels enseignements cent ans plus tard.
-Antoine Messarra, la gouvernabilité du régime constitutionnel libanais, approche comparative et perspectives pour demain.
-Jean Clam, Cent ans après sa fondation le Liban est un État failli et
une nation expatriée.
-Amin Elias, Laïcité personnaliste ou confédération sous protection
internationale.
-Antoine Fleyfel, Fondements théologiques du pluralisme , Réflexions
libanaises.
* Fondé et dirigé par Charles Chartouni en 2018.
**Éditions, l’Harmattan, Pensée Religieuse et Philosophique Arabe-43, Juin 2021.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on June 02-03/2021
Israeli coalition led by Yair Lapid announces formation of new government
Leila Gharagozlou/The National/June 3, 2021
New administration ends Benjamin Netanyahu's record tenure as Israeli prime minister
A coalition of Israeli parties led by Yair Lapid has announced that a new government has been formed, bringing to an end Benjamin Netanyahu's record tenure as Israeli prime minister, AP reported late on Wednesday. If ratified by parliament in a confidence vote in the coming week, the new Israeli government will make history by becoming the first to include an Arab party after Mansour Abbas, head of the conservative Raam, signed the agreement. Mr Lapid said on Twitter that he had told the country’s president of the deal. “This government will work for all the citizens of Israel, those that voted for it and those that didn’t. It will do everything to unite Israeli society,” he said.
Naftali Bennett's assent key to securing deal
The coalition agreement began to take shape this week when Naftali Bennett, leader of the small right-wing party Yamina, confirmed he was working towards a coalition agreement with Mr Lapid, leader of the centrist party Yesh Atid. The alliance of the various groups has now pushed Mr Netanyahu's Likud party out of power and into the role of opposition. The swearing-in is expected to take place on June 9, giving Mr Netanyahu another week to try to persuade legislators to leave the new coalition. Mr Netanyahu had become a divisive figure in Israeli politics over his tenure. Three parties in the last election were led by former top aides who fell out with him. "There is no option for a right-wing government led by Netanyahu. It’s either a change of government or new elections," Mr Bennett said this week. "No one believes Netanyahu any more." Israel's now departing President. Reuven Rivlin, had invited Mr Netanyahu to form a government but the prime minister, already losing support and facing a criminal trial, was unable to do so. Mr Rivlin then gave Mr Lapid the job, with the deadline of midnight on Wednesday. Mr Lapid and Mr Bennett needed 61 seats for a government majority in the 120-seat Knesset, or parliament. With a deal now agreed to, Israel's parliament will have a week to vote on any coalition arrangements before a new government and prime minister are sworn in.

Iran Navy Ship Sinks after Fire in Gulf of Oman
Agence France Presse/June 02/2021
An Iranian naval vessel sank in the Gulf of Oman Wednesday after efforts to put out a fire failed, but the crew safely disembarked, the navy said. The fleet replenishment tanker Kharg had caught fire on Tuesday near the port of Jask on the Gulf of Oman.The fire broke out in "one of the systems" of the vessel, a navy statement said without elaborating. Firefighting efforts continued "for 20 hours" before the ship went down, it said. "Considering the spread of the fire, the mission to save the Kharg failed and it sank in waters off Jask." It added that the vessel had left for a "training mission" in international waters days ago. Last year, an Iranian warship was hit by friendly fire during a naval exercise off Jask, killing the 19 sailors onboard. The port lies close to the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic chokepoint at the head of the Gulf through which a fifth of world oil output passes. Jask is also important to Iran's economy as the site where the government plans to build the country's second-largest oil export terminal. A 1,000-kilometer pipeline from Bushehr province on the Gulf to Jask was put into service just days ago, the government said. It will provide a new bypass route for oil exports avoiding the Strait of Hormuz.In recent months, there have also been reported attacks on Iranian shipping linked to its arch foe Israel. In April, Iran said its freighter Saviz was hit by an "explosion" in the Red Sea, after media reports said Israel had struck the ship.

Massive fire breaks out at oil refinery near Iran’s Tehran
Yaghoub Fazeli, Al Arabiya/02 June ,2021
A massive fire broke out at an oil refinery near the Iranian capital Tehran on Wednesday, state media reported. The fire broke out at the Shahid Tondgooyan refinery in Shahr-e-Rey, south of the capital Tehran, Iran’s state broadcaster (IRIB) said on Telegram. Mansour Darajati, director-general of Tehran’s crisis management team, said the incident was due to a leak in one of the pipelines inside the refinery. “Fortunately, we have not had any casualties so far,” the Young Journalists Club (YJC), an IRIB-affiliated news agency, quoted Darajati as saying. The head of public relations at the refinery ruled out the possibility of sabotage, IRIB reported. “So far, no information is available on the extent of possible losses and damages,” IRIB quoted him as saying. Around 18 storage tanks at the refinery have so far caught fire, YJC reported. Several ambulances have been dispatched to the scene, IRIB cited Mojtaba Khaledi, spokesman for Iran’s emergency services, as saying. Hours earlier, the largest ship in the Iranian navy caught fire and later sank in the Gulf of Oman under unclear circumstances, state media reported. In 2020, Iran witnessed a series of mysterious fires and explosions across the country, some of them at sensitive military and nuclear sites.

Iran's largest naval ship sinks in Gulf of Oman after being engulfed in flames
Robert Tollast/The National/June 02/ 2021
The 'Kharg' caught fire in the early hours of Wednesday
Iran’s largest naval ship, the Kharg, sank on Wednesday morning after fire swept through the vessel from bow to stern. State-affiliated media, including the Tasnim news agency, published video footage from the rescue effort. All crew members were rescued from the 207-metre long vessel, according to reports. Fire reportedly broke out at about 2.25am and quickly grew out of control. The ship was abandoned in the Gulf of Oman, near the Strait of Hormuz and the Iranian port of Jask. The loss of the Kharg leaves Iran without a second support ship, after damage to the MV Saviz, which was attacked in the Red Sea in March with limpet mines. The Saviz did not sink, but was put out of action for an extended period after explosions caused its engine room to flood. The Kharg has been described as a logistical support ship, carrying fuel and supplies for other vessels, as well as being able to carry helicopters. Like many of Iran’s large surface vessels, it was ageing and may have suffered maintenance problems. The Kharg was bought from Britain in 1977 as a civilian vessel, before being adapted for the Iranian Navy in 1984. Iran is forced to reverse-engineer spare parts for ships purchased from abroad because of international sanctions preventing the import of new components. Iran’s navy is also prone to training accidents. In May last year, 19 Iranian sailors were killed when the Konarak was struck by an Iranian missile. The vessel had been towing a target ship for a missile test. While the loss of the Konarak was accidental, the fate of the Kharg could prompt speculation that a foreign state had conducted a sabotage operation, following the attack on the Saviz. The Saviz, which Iran claimed was a civilian vessel, was long thought to have had a military role.“Saviz is, foremost, a floating armoury ship,” Farzin Nadimi, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank, told The National at the time.

Imported Iranian crude oil to US was from seized tankers: Sources
Joseph Haboush, Al Arabiya English/02 June ,2021
The Iranian crude oil that appeared to be imported by the United States in March was from tankers the US had previously seized, sources familiar with the matter said Wednesday.Confusion surrounded the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) publication of 1.033 million barrels of Iranian crude oil that appeared to be imported by the US earlier this year. But one of the sources told Al Arabiya English that the crude was from elicit tankers “commandeered by the US.”According to The Associated Press, the oil was from a ship seized in February by US forces near the UAE’s Fujairah. Al Arabiya English could not independently verify the origin of the crude, and the Department of Energy did not respond to requests for comment. Reuters initially reported that the March shipment was the first to be imported from Iran since 1991, and questions were asked whether the Biden administration circumvented US sanctions on Iran’s energy sector. However, the first source told Al Arabiya English that the Treasury Department took the cargoes, and no money was transferred to Iran. The US previously said that it sold over a million barrels of seized Iranian fuel last year.
Meanwhile, media reports suggest Iran is currently sending two vessels towards Venezuela, one of which is a former oil tanker. US officials are closely monitoring the two vessels, sources told Washington-based Politico on Wednesday. But there are no plans to send US Navy ships to the Atlantic to confront the incoming vessels, the officials said.

The truth about the Natanz explosion impact revealed
Jerusalem Post/June 02/2021
Some 164 to174 centrifuges may have been damaged or destroyed by the April explosion.
On April 11, there was an explosion at Iran’s all-important Natanz underground nuclear facility. After months of debates and different narratives about what the impact was of that explosion, Monday night’s The International Atomic Energy Agency quarterly report finally lifted the veil. More will become known in a few more months and the picture will be clearer in another year. But it can already be said that neither the original Israeli estimates of a nine-month delay to Iran’s nuclear program nor Iran’s claim that the impact was very minor are true.
The truth is somewhere in the middle. The IAEA report said that between February and May, 335.7 kg. of 5% level enriched uranium was produced, an average of 107 kg. per month. In other words, although Tehran finished the quarter with significant amounts of new enriched uranium, the amounts seem to be consistent with Iran’s progress made before April 11, and making little progress afterward. In addition, a central question remains how many of Iran’s army of centrifuges were damaged by the explosion.
Institute for Science and International Security President David Albright said, “production has been reduced,” while adding “the amount would be better reflected in the next report since this one includes LEU production at pre-explosion levels for 54 days and post-explosion levels for 40 days.”
Moreover, he said, “An added difficulty is the Iranians have every incentive to show operation via the idea of a report of feeding uranium into cascades. It could be that those cascades are working with many damaged centrifuges or at reduced efficiency,” something which the IAEA might not be able to fully detect.
Based on widespread reports by international media from a range of sources about the incident and on the above new data, Albright estimated that as many as 15 cascades, each containing around 164 to174 centrifuges may have been damaged or destroyed by the April explosion.
He noted that even when a cascade is not destroyed if deposits of debris make their way into the piping, easy replacements of various machinery becomes impractical. This by no means ends Iran’s nuclear program, which included around 5,060 operating IR-1s between the Natanz and Fordow nuclear facilities, along with another 13,000 or so in storage. It is, however, a much more significant blow than Tehran initially wanted to admit. Albright also speculated that perhaps as many as three of six cascades of more advanced IR-2m centrifuges may have been destroyed.
Another major question raised after the Natanz attack was how significant was it that the Islamic Republic started enriching uranium to an all-new high of 60%. Previously, the vast majority of enrichment had been enriched at the 5% level, with a small amount reaching up to the 20% level, but 60% – much closer to the weaponization 90% level – was unheard of until then. Iran presented its enrichment to the 60% level as another example they used to support their claim that the Natanz attack had not substantively limited its enrichment progress. However, the latest report indicates that Iran has only enriched around 2.4 kg. in seven weeks. Albright said that it would take 40-50 kg. of 60% enriched uranium to be sufficient for a nuclear explosive. This means the Iranians have produced a mere 5 to 6 % of what they need. Considering all of the above, the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program and progress were greatly weakened by the April explosion at Natanz in both quantity and quality, something that has – at least temporarily – also reduced some of their leverage in the ability to threaten the West. At the same time, Iran demonstrated resilience, which surprised even top Israeli intelligence officials, and they have shown a powerful capacity to recover from similar great setbacks before.

Israel faced multi-front war during recent Gaza conflict
Jerusalem Post/June 02/2021
Iran may have used recent battles in Gaza as a dry run for future multi-front operations.
Israel faced a multifront conflict during the recent battles in Gaza. However, much of that multifront aspect has remained hidden because it did not manifest itself in attacks. During the lead-up to the conflict, Iran put out messages to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, coordinating message discipline for Quds Day before Hamas launched its May 10 attack. Around the time of the conflict Hamas was also in touch with Hezbollah, and it appears that Iraqi-based pro-Iran militias and the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen were all interested in joining the war against Israel. Not much is known about what the Houthis, Hezbollah and Iraqi militias did during the war from May 10 to May 22. However, what is known is that many messages were released by pro-Iranian militias in Iraq. These are part of the PMU or Hashd al-Shaabi. In addition, Israel accused Iran of sending a drone into Israeli airspace on May 18. The drone came from Syria or Iraq. If it came from Iraq, that would be a major development. Iranian drones from Syria have threatened Israel in the past. Rockets were also fired at Israel from Lebanon. What is publicly known is that Iran’s Press TV has operationalized the Houthis in Yemen to claim that Israeli “tourists are being transferred to Socotra island.” This report appeared on Press TV June 1. Iran has fed anti-Israel stories about Socotra before. This is an island off Yemen, claimed by Yemen, but where the UAE is said to operate. It appears that someone, perhaps with links to Iran, also had an agenda in pushing details about another “mysterious” base on Mayun island off Yemen. This isn’t linked to the Gaza war, but it is part of the wider Iranian agenda in the region. The Houthis may be basing drones from Iran that can strike at Israel, according to reports in January. Hamas has claimed that after the recent war it can now break the siege of Gaza. It has attempted to increase rage in the West Bank, Jerusalem and inside Israel.Other evidence of the multifront nature of the recent conflict comes from several messages posted on social media and online. For instance, Al-Akhbar news in Lebanon says that the head of the Hamas political bureau visited Lebanon last year and coordinated activities with Hassan Nasrallah.
In addition, Al-Akhbar has revealed that the Houthis “asked Hamas for the coordinates of Israeli targets,” during the conflict. The Houthis asked to be involved and signaled their willingness to support Hamas. Hamas indicated it didn’t need their support at this time and therefore the Houthi request was not fulfilled. Reports at Press TV also noted that Hamas thanked Iran for its support during the war. Lastly, in Iraq the Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba militia, which is linked to Iran, apparently met with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad representatives to “discuss support in the struggle against Israel.” These reports are the first indications that a multifront war was not only in the planning and coordination stages but that Iran may have used this conflict as a dry run for future multifront operations. In the past there have been warnings of multifront conflicts. In addition, during past conflicts, such as the 2019 conflict between Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, there has always been a multifront aspect because groups like PIJ have offices in Damascus and work with Iran. Hezbollah works closely with the Iraqi militias. Iran uses Syria as a base of entrenchment where Hezbollah and Iraqi militias like Kataib Hezbollah interact and smuggle and base drones and missiles. Israel has carried out a “war between the wars” campaign against Iranian entrenchment in Syria. The wider picture now involves the Houthis in Yemen. As Iran helps them expand their drone and missile range, the picture that is forming is of a possible multifront conflict in the future. This means drones and missiles in Yemen are a threat to southern Israel. Missiles in Gaza may have a range of 250 km. Iran moved ballistic missiles to Iraq in 2018 and 2019. In the summer of 2019 pro-Iran militias in Iraq accused Israel of airstrikes in Iraq.
Israel has expressed concerns about the transfer of precision-guided munitions from Iraq through Syria to Hezbollah. This presents challenges involving drones and PGMs in Syria and Lebanon as well as drones and ballistic missiles in Iraq.
The multifront war appears to have always been contemplated against Israel, and the recent conflict in Gaza was an example of how it may be launched, planned and operationalized.

Netanyahu Says Israel Would Risk 'Friction' with U.S. over Iran
Associated Press/June 02/2021
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that he's prepared to risk tension with the U.S. if that is what it takes to neutralize Iran's nuclear capabilities. The embattled premier, whose political future is in question just 11 days out from a bruising war, said Israel's biggest threat remains the possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran. He said Israel is prepared to prevent that from happening even if the United States and other nations succeed in reinstating the 2015 Iran nuclear accord. "If we have to choose, I hope it doesn't happen, between friction with our great friend the United States and eliminating the existential threat — eliminating the existential threat" wins, Netanyahu said. He spoke at a ceremony for David Barnea, the new chief of Israel's Mossad spy agency. Iran has accused Israel of being behind a number of attacks killing Iranian nuclear scientists or sabotaging Iranian nuclear facilities.
More talks on the subject were expected this week when Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz travels to Washington. He's slated to meet with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin and U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan about Iran and stability in the region. Netanyahu's comments come amid ongoing talks in Vienna between nations seeking to update and reinstate the 2015 agreement, in line with President Joe Biden's campaign promise. His predecessor, Republican President Donald Trump, pulled the U.S. out of the accord in 2018 and imposed sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
The deal places curbs on Iranian nuclear activities in exchange for relief from crippling economic sanctions. Netanyahu staunchly opposes the agreement, arguing that it does not have enough safeguards to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Israel also says the deal must address Iran's support for militant groups, its military actions across the region and its development of long-range missiles capable of striking Israel. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only and says the nuclear deal should be reinstated without any changes. Netanyahu spoke about Iran on Tuesday as his rivals in the Knesset huddled to try to form a coalition government that would end Netanyahu's 12-year rule. The developments come amid a fragile truce between Israel and Hamas' militant rulers in the Gaza Strip after a brutal 11-day war that killed more than 250 people, most of them Palestinian. Hamas, which opposes Israel's right to exist and is considered a terrorist group by Israel, the U.S. and other Western countries, receives millions of dollars of military aid from Iran each year.

Israel Destroys Syrian Army Post in Golan
Agence France Presse/June 02/2021
The Israeli army has destroyed a Syrian regime observation post in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, the third such operation in a year, a spokesman said. The army "destroyed a forward observation post of the Syrian army that was set up in an Israeli area west of the Alfa line in the Golan Heights," spokesman Avichay Adraee wrote on Twitter, referring to the Israeli side of a U.N.-patrolled buffer zone between both countries. He said Israeli troops attacked and blew up the post, adding that his army would not "tolerate any attempt to violate the sovereignty" of Israel. There was no immediate report of any casualties. Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since the beginning of the conflict there in 2011, mostly targeting Iranian and Lebanese Hizbullah forces as well as Syrian government troops, though it rarely acknowledges them. Its military has said it hit some 50 targets in 2020 alone.
Israel says it is trying to prevent Iran, which has been one of the Syrian government's key allies in the decade-old civil war, from gaining a permanent military foothold on its doorstep. In early May, Syrian state media and a war monitor said Israel had carried out air strikes in the southern Syrian province of Quneitra, near the border with Israel. The Golan Heights, a strategic military zone, was seized by Israel from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War.

Isaac Herzog elected 11th President of the State of Israel by wide margin
Jerusalem Post/June 02/2021
Herzog defeated Miriam Peretz in 87 to 27 vote, becoming first son of a president to become president.
Jewish Agency chairman Isaac Herzog will be the 11th president of the State of Israel after he received 87 votes from MKs in a secret ballot vote in the Knesset plenum. Herzog’s opponent, Israel Prize-winning educator Miriam Peretz, received 27 votes and three MKs abstained. Had she been elected, Peretz would have become Israel’s first woman president. It was the largest victory in any presidential election in Israel’s history. Herzog will take over from President Reuven Rivlin when his term ends on July 9. A veteran politician, Herzog is a former head of the Labor Party, a former opposition leader, a former welfare and diaspora minister and is the son of Chaim Herzog, who served as Israel’s president from 1983 to 1993. Herzog thanked all the MKs who voted for him and said it was an honor to serve the entire people of Israel. He called Peretz a hero and an inspiration. “I will be the president of everyone,” Herzog said, singling out Israelis across the political spectrum and Diaspora Jewry. Herzog said, alongside Netanyahu, that he was ready to work with any government and any prime minister.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yamina leader Naftali Bennett, who is trying to replace him, congratulated Herzog and wished Peretz well. Rivlin spoke with Herzog on the phone, and also called presidential Miriam Peretz to thank her. “I send you my warmest greetings, Mr. President,” Rivlin said. “I can tell you that the responsibility of the role that you are about to assume is unlike anything you have done until now. The Jewish and democratic system we established here, in the land of our ancestors, has a body and soul. If the Knesset is a place of argument, as we have certainly seen recently, the President’s Residence is a place of discourse, partnership and statehood.” Rivlin said the title of ‘first citizen’ and the task of guarding the character of the State of Israel, particularly at this point in time, are heavy responsibilities. “I have no doubt that you will bear these responsibilities superbly,” Rivlin said. “I am proud to pass on the baton to you in a month’s time.” With his victory, Herzog becomes the first president whose father had been president. Chaim Herzog was Israel’s sixth president. Every Knesset faction granted its MKs the freedom to vote their conscience, rather than binding them by faction discipline. None of the factions endorsed a candidate. This is the first presidential race in Israel in which neither of the two candidates is a current MK. Peretz said she was thrilled that after coming to Israel from Morocco and going to a transit camp, she was considered worthy to stand against someone of Herzog’s caliber. She said she would continue in her mission to heal the rifts in the nation. In her concession speech, alongside Netanyahu, Peretz said that by running, she accomplished what as a child she could not have even dreamed of. “A fitting president who honors us was elected,” Peretz said. “I will pray for his success, because his success is our success.”Michael Siegal, The Jewish Agency’s Chairman of the Board of Governors, said Herzog’s “unwavering dedication to the Jewish people and to serving the State of Israel is an inspiration, and we will all undoubtedly continue to benefit from his leadership.”

Labour figure elected Israeli president, midnight deadline for PM
The Arab Weekly/June 02/2021
JERUSALEM — Isaac Herzog, a veteran Labour politician was elected president Tuesday, to a largely ceremonial role that is meant to serve as the nation’s moral compass and promote unity. The anonymous vote was held among the 120 members of the Knesset, or parliament. Herzog will be Israel’s 11th president, succeeding Reuven Rivlin, who is set to leave office next month after seven years in office. Herzog, 60, is a former head of Israel’s Labour Party and opposition leader who unsuccessfully ran against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the 2013 parliamentary elections. He is the scion of a prominent Zionist family. His father, Chaim Herzog, was Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations before being elected president. His uncle, Abba Eban, was Israel’s first foreign minister and ambassador to the United Nations and United States. His grandfather was the country’s first chief rabbi.
Herzog defeated Miriam Peretz, an educator who was seen as an outsider. She was also seen as closer to the country’s dominant conservative and nationalist political camp. Since resigning from parliament, Herzog has for three years been head of the Jewish Agency, an influential organisation that works closely with the government to promote immigration to Israel. He was widely seen as the favourite because of his deep ties to the political establishment. He will hold office for a single seven-year term starting July 9. The president, while largely a ceremonial head of state, is tasked with tapping a political party leader to form governing coalitions after parliamentary elections. Israel has held four national elections in the past two years amid a protracted political crisis. The president also has the power to grant pardons, creating a potentially sensitive situation as Netanyahu stands trial for a series of corruption charges.
Edging out Netanyahu
In the race to form the cabinet, Israel’s opposition leader moved closer to unseating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday after agreeing terms with several parties including one led by Defence Minister Benny Gantz, a spokesman said. Yair Lapid, a centrist tasked with forming the next governing coalition after the conservative Netanyahu failed to do so in the wake of an inconclusive March 23 election, has until midnight (2100 GMT) on Wednesday to present a final slate. Lapid, a 57-year-old former TV host and author, has yet to clinch a deal with his main partner, nationalist Naftali Bennett, who would serve as premier first under a proposed rotation between the two men. Lapid’s Yesh Atid party and Gantz’s centrist Blue and White said in a joint statement they had “agreed on the outlines of the government and core issues relating to the strengthening of democracy and Israeli society”.
Gantz would remain defence minister in the new cabinet, the parties said. Netanyahu, 71, has sought to discredit Bennett and two other rightists negotiating with Lapid, saying they were endangering Israel’s security, an allusion to efforts to curb Iran’s nuclear programme and manage ever-fraught Palestinian ties.
Deals have also been reached with the left-wing Meretz and centre-left Labour parties as well as with former defence minister Avigdor Lieberman’s nationalist Yisrael Beitenu party, a Lapid spokesman said. The United Arab List was also negotiating to join the coalition. If it does, it would be the first time in Israel’s history that an independent Arab party became a member of the government. If Lapid misses Wednesday’s deadline, marking the end of a 28-day presidential mandate to put together a coalition, parliament will have three weeks to agree on a new candidate. Should that fail, Israel will hold another election, its fifth in some two years.

Olmert: UAE leaders took daring steps for peace; Will Israel, Palestinians follow?
Jerusalem Post/June 02/2021
The former prime minister in dialogue with editor-in-chief Yaakov Katz
Former prime minister Ehud Olmert on Wednesday gave tremendous credit to Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MBZ) for taking great risks to normalize with Israel, and questioned whether Jerusalem and the Palestinians would follow suit to reach a peace deal.
Speaking at the at the Global Investment Forum in Dubai, sponsored by The Jerusalem Post and the Khaleej Times, Olmert said MBZ was “prepared to take a step which may have been seen by some, especially in the region, to be risky, to be dangerous, to be unpopular, because it is not congruent with what was expected by the larger Arab-Muslim community.” He continued: “I say that they have set an example that should be followed by many others. Therefore, they deserve recognition for leadership that will set the trend for a major change that can” improve the entire Middle East.
Next, the former prime minister said: “Now it’s time for leaders of other countries, starting with the leaders of the State of Israel, to take a giant step forward in order to resolve all the outstanding issues which are still creating difficulties in our part of the world.
“Israel has to step up because we are stronger. Not because we are more or less responsible. We are stronger and we are occupying the Palestinians. We need to step up and sit down without any preconditions for a two-state solution. And I hope Abu Mazen [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas] will have the wisdom and the courage to do what he failed to do when I proposed a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders,” in 2008. Moreover, addressing any future leaders of Israel, he said that whoever they might be, “if they will have the guts to do it [cut a deal with the Palestinians], the whole Middle East will change.”The former prime minister said both sides had made terrible mistakes, missing chances for peace in the past. He rebuked Abbas for failing to give a conditional yes to the Trump administration’s January 2020 peace plan to try to build on positive momentum and potentially expose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as rejecting the plan. Further, he warned the PA that the world may lose patience with it for not trying hard enough to compromise to resolve the conflict with Israel. In addition, Olmert said, “my vision, my dream... is that the Middle East in a short period of time will become the most powerful, richest and most stable region in the world.” In 2008, Olmert offered Abbas the most far-reaching Israeli compromise to date to resolve the conflict. However, by the time he made the offer, he had already announced his resignation due to legal problems, which put the offer in doubt, and various officials said that even then-foreign minister Tzipi Livni told the PA to wait for her to be elected. She was defeated in the race to form a coalition by Netanyahu in 2009, who has been prime minister ever since. Speaking to potential new prime ministers Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid and Yamina leader Naftali Bennett, Olmert cautioned: “Be careful until the very last minute – you never know in Israeli politics what may happen. I hope they will succeed. But even if they fail today, they will succeed in a short time because Netanyahu is done.”He also turned to the audience and said, “While some Israelis believe we come here to teach the Emirates how we build and create... there is a lot we can learn from you guys – the more open-minded we will be about it.”

Kadhimi threatens to resign if he does not have a free hand to rein in pro-Iran militias
The Arab Weekly/June 02/2021
BAGHDAD – Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi is threatening to submit his resignation to President Barham Saleh and the leaders of the Shia forces, unless the government gives him a free hand to rein in the actions of the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), which are nominally affiliated with the leadership of the armed forces.
The PMF is formally linked to the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, a position held today by Kadhimi. But the PMF will follow Iran’s vision in all decisions. This is known in Baghdad and recognised by political parties. “The political forces have been in continuous consultations since the armed parade held in the Green Zone,” a senior Iraqi government official told the Arab Weekly, adding that “In all circumstances, the government will not allow this kind of parade to happen again.” According to the senior official, “Kadhimi has given President Barham Saleh and the leaders of the various Shia forces, the choice between him submitting his resignation or giving his government a free hand to hold accountable the abusers, the corrupt and those involved in terrorist crimes among the leaders and officers of the Popular Mobilisation Forces.”The Iraqi prime minister said that the logic of state and law enforcement was applied in the country last week. He added that, “Last week witnessed events that were dealt with wisely, even though there were people who tried to drag us into the unknown. But our behaviour was determined by the principle of preserving the supreme interests of the country and ensuring the welfare of all our people.”An Iraqi parliamentarian described Kadhimi’s position as “courageous”, as he asked President Saleh to choose between his resignation and putting an end to the anomalous situation represented by the role played by the PMF outside the framework of the law.
The parliamentarian, who preferred not to be named, told The Arab Weekly, “Kadhimi takes a courageous stand when he puts the people in the picture. Either the people stand with him or choose the path of chaos. The prime minister is consistent with himself and loyal to his position”.A few days ago, when Kadhimi ordered the arrest of Qassem Musleh, the PMF commander in Western Iraq, armed militias entered the Green Zone and threatened to attack government headquarters.
Musleh was arrested after three people confessed to being directly responsible for leading a secret death squad that assassinated many activists opposing Iranian influence in Iraq, among them Fahim al-Taie and Ihab al-Wazni in the city of Karbala.
Although the militias and all their members who are officially affiliated with the leadership of the PMF withdrew from the vicinity of Kadhimi’s home, the US embassy, the United Nations mission and the headquarters of the Iraqi Parliament without achieving their goal of releasing Musleh, their impressive military parade left hanging the question of who holds more power in Iraq. From their withdrawal until the time of the filing of this report, tanks, armoured vehicles, troop carriers and military vehicles continue to occupy the perimeter and entrances of the Green Zone, where the headquarters of the government, parliament and international missions are located.
During the past few years, Iranian-controlled Iraqi media sought to present the PMF as a “holy force” whose members could not commit any errors. But this is contradicted by much evidence that illustrates the involvement of leaders and senior officers of this force in terrorist crimes and acts of theft and corruption.
An Iraqi political observer said he was not surprised by Kadhimi’s announcement that he had reached a critical juncture where he sees himself unable to manage state affairs in the presence of an armed force that lives off the state but is not subject to its control.
The same observer told The Arab Weekly, “This is a dilemma that those who preceded him did not confront because of their association with parties loyal to Iran.”
“And because he deviated from this rule that was toed by post-occupation Iraqi regimes, Kadhimi has faced a difficult situation in which the government was unable to put an end to systematic killings and kidnappings carried out by militias that are not subject to the rule of law and only recognise their own laws”.
A clash between the state and the militias seemed unavoidable. That is because these militia forces had something akin to a coup in the making, which manifested itself through shows of force that they put on in the streets from time to time, in addition to continuing to lob missiles at the areas of the diplomatic missions that the state is supposed to protect. But Iraqi political commentator Ali al-Rubaie believes the threat of resignation is neither serious nor credible for reasons related to the circumstances of Kadhimi’s accession to his position and others related to the political situation existing before he assumed the premiership where the militias dominated every sinew of the state.
Rubaie attributed this to Kadhimi’s failure to have a plan to reinforce the authority of the state and its right to use legitimate violence and state coercion to impose its sovereignty. Rubaie told The Arab Weekly that “Kadhimi not only does not have any vision to control the state apparatus, ensure civil peace and curtail the erosion of the legitimacy of his government, as it lacks competence and he has become the weakest prime minister that Iraq has known since the killing of the first demonstrator during his reign”. Iraqi writer Masar Abdul Hassan Radi believes that Kadhimi’s threat to resign is nothing more than a face-saving manoeuvre by his government and will not ultimately disrupt the balance of power controlled by Iran. Radi told The Arab Weekly, “Iranian militias have been keen, since Kadhimi’s assumption of the premiership, to exercise their power against him whenever discontent rises in the street.” He added, “The threat to resign is not something new for those who have headed the Iraqi government. Former Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi always said his resignation was in his pocket, but when he resigned, he submitted his resignation to the religious establishment and not to the people”.

Palestinians declare UNRWA Gaza director ‘persona non grata’
Jerusalem Post/June 02/2021
Palestinian factions on Wednesday declared Matthias Schmale, director of operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the Gaza Strip, persona non grata and said he will not be allowed to return to the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave. The factions claimed that Schmale was “a major reason for the suffering of thousands of Palestinian refugees and UNRWA employees in the Gaza Strip.”They also declared Schmale’s deputy, David de Bold, persona non grata. The factions said that the UNRWA director and his deputy will no longer be permitted to stay in the Gaza Strip “due to his hostile positions and bias in favor of the occupation.” They called on UNRWA to appoint a new director for its operations in the Gaza Strip.Schmale has been called in for consultation with his bosses in Jerusalem after angering Palestinians with comments they said favored Israel during last month's fighting. An official told Reuters that Deputy Commissioner-General Leni Stenseth would temporarily lead the Gaza team in Schmale's absence. The decision to “expel” Schmale from the Gaza Strip came after his controversial statements regarding the recent Israel-Hamas fighting. Schmale told Israel’s Channel 12 last week that the Israeli military strikes on the Gaza Strip appeared to be carried out with “sophistication” and “precision.” “I have the impression there is a huge sophistication in the way the Israeli military struck over the 11 days,” Schmale said. “Yes they didn’t hit, with some exceptions, civilian targets, but the viciousness, the ferocity of those strikes were heavily felt. More than 60 children were killed, 19 of who went to UNRWA schools. So I think the precision was there but there was unacceptable and unbearable loss of life on the civilian side.”Schmale’s statements drew strong condemnations from many Palestinians, who accused him of “completely ignoring Israeli crimes.”In the past week, Palestinians protested against Schmale and demanded that he immediately leave the Gaza Strip. Schamle expressed regret and said that his remarks on Channel 12 have offended and hurt those who had family members and friends killed and injured during the war. “I truly regret to have caused them pain,” Schmale wrote on Twitter. “I reiterate my sincere condolences to those who had family members and friends killed. I express my utmost respect and solidarity with my UNRWA colleagues and their families who suffered immense pain and loss.”He said that “military precision and sophistication are never a justification for war.” He also explained that he did not say that the IDF operated within the laws of war. “Killing more than 200 civilians, including innocent women and children, is not acting within laws of war. There must be an independent investigation and accountability for those actions.”
Reuters contributed to this report.

Erdogan accuses US of supporting ‘terrorists’ against Turkey
The Arab Weekly/June 02/2021
ISTANBUL--Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday warned that the United States risked “losing a precious friend” if it tries to corner his country, speaking two weeks before his first meeting with US counterpart Joe Biden. Already tense, relations between the two NATO states have further deteriorated since Biden replaced Erdogan’s ally Donald Trump in January, with the new president making a point of highlighting Turkey’s dire human rights record. When asked about Ankara-Washington relations, Erdogan said in an interview with Turkish state broadcaster TRT on Tuesday that “those who corner the Republic of Turkey will lose a precious friend”.Erdogan’s combative stance comes ahead of the first meeting between the two leaders on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Brussels on June 14. Biden was in no rush to speak with the Turkish leader after taking office, waiting three months before calling Erdogan in April. That call was also on the eve of Biden’s historic decision to recognise the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman empire during World War I, a move that outraged Turkey which rejects that term. “What is the reason for our tensions (with the US)? The so-called Armenian genocide,” Erdogan said on Tuesday. “Don’t you have any other problems to deal with rather than advocating for Armenia?” He also listed several issues that have strained relations since 2016, including US support for Kurdish militias in Syria that Turkey deems “terrorists”. “If the United States is indeed our ally, should they side with the terrorists or with us? Unfortunately, they continue to support the terrorists,” he said. Erdogan had previously indicated he intended to mend ties with Biden, last week saying their meeting will be a “harbinger of a new era” in US-Turkey relations. On Tuesday Erdogan, who has ruled Turkey since 2003, said he has always managed to work with the person in the White House “whether he is a Republican or a Democract”.

Erdogan says Turkey could target refugee camp deep inside Iraq
Reuters/June 02/2021
The camp was established in the 1990s when thousands of Kurds from Turkey crossed the border in a movement Ankara says was deliberately provoked by the PKK.
ANKARA - President Tayyip Erdogan has warned Iraq that Turkey will "clean up" a refugee camp which it says provides a safe haven for Kurdish militants, threatening to take its long military campaign deeper inside Iraqi territory. Turkish forces have stepped up attacks on bases of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) inside northern Iraq over the last year, focusing their firepower and incursions mainly on a strip of territory up to 30 km (about 20 miles) inside Iraq. But Erdogan said Makhmour, a camp 180 km south of the Turkish border which has hosted thousands of Turkish refugees for more than two decades, was an "incubator" for militants and must be tackled. "If the United Nations does not clean it up, we will do it as a UN member," Erdogan said, adding that Ankara believed Makhmour posed as great a threat as the PKK's stronghold in the Qandil mountains further north.
"How long are we supposed to be patient about it?" he told Turkish state broadcaster TRT in an interview late on Tuesday. A senior Iraqi official told Reuters that Turkey complained last week to Baghdad about "terrorist activities launched by the PKK from their camp in Makhmour against Turkey."
Security commanders and local officials investigated the Turkish complaint and told the government that the Makhmour camp was controlled by PKK fighters who did not allow access to government forces, the official said. An Iraqi government spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The camp was established in the 1990s when thousands of Kurds from Turkey crossed the border in a movement Ankara says was deliberately provoked by the PKK. The PKK, designated a terrorist organization by the United States and European Union, has fought an insurgency against the state in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey since 1984. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict. Makhmour was targeted by Turkish air strikes a year ago, although there were no reports of casualties at the time, but a senior Turkish official said it was now a priority for Ankara.
"Makhmour camp is being used as one of the logistics centers in attacks against Turkey or the Turkish Armed Forces," the official said. "It's time now, it has to be cleansed of PKK."

Is Turkey trying to provoke a new conflict in Manbij, Syria?
Reuters/June 02/2021
The SDF have been backed by the US to fight ISIS since 2015.
Turkey is angling for a meeting with US President Joe Biden and is seeking to host the US UN envoy. Turkey’s narrative is that it wants to reconcile with the US after years of bashing Washington, detaining and harassing Americans, accusing the US of plotting a 2016 coup attempt, and even threatening US soldiers in Syria. Turkey has also acquired Russia’s S-400 system, provoked increased conflict in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Azerbaijan and is increasingly radicalizing young men to carry out extremist attacks. Turkey has hosted Hamas, threatened Israel and Greece. Isolated, Ankara now wants friends again. However, it may also be provoking conflict in a sensitive area of Syria called Manbij. Over recent days protests in Manbij targeted the Syrian Democratic Forces. The SDF have been backed by the US to fight ISIS since 2015. However the SDF was not widely supported inside the former US administration and its liberation of Manbij from ISIS was never considered a major goal. Manbij became a kind of distraction because the town is close to Turkey and Turkey invaded Syria in 2016 to stop the SDF from advancing. Turkey claims the SDF is linked to the PKK, which Turkey is fighting a war against. Despite no evidence of the SDF engaging in any activity against Ankara, Turkey has used the SDF’s presence as an excuse to bomb and attack Syria.
This has put Manbij in the crosshairs of Turkey for years. The SDF was initially based on the Kurdish YPG, however after the US became more involved after 2015 the SDF was expanded to include numerous Arab fighters against ISIS. Manbij has a large Arab population. Turkey, which backs its own Syrian National Army in northern Syria, has sought to get Syrian Arabs to fight the SDF, working through local tribes and others. The goal here from Turkey’s view is to get Syrians to fight each other, to distract each other from the original Syrian rebellion against Assad. As long as Syrians fight each other, Turkey can benefit and increase control. During the Trump era Turkey tried to sell Trump on the theory that it would fight ISIS in Syria if the US left. However former US commanders and local US commanders knew there was no evidence of Turkey fighting ISIS and that in fact most foreign ISIS members came to Syria via Turkey. Many then fled to Turkey when the SDF defeated ISIS in Raqqa. ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was found near the Turkish border in Idlib in 2019. Turkey may have traded information on Baghdadi’s whereabouts in exchange for the Trump administration signing off on Ankara’s invasion of Syria in October 2019, and the US withdrawal.
Now Manbij is in the crosshairs again. According to reports mass protests in the city and attacks on the SDF led to live fire being used against crowds of people. Up to eight may have been killed. The reports here appear to show that locals resent the SDF presence and claims are that they don’t want to be “conscripted.” It’s not entirely clear if they are being conscripted. The Assad regime has also sought conscription of Syrians, while Turkey has hired poor Syrians to fight in Azerbaijan and Libya as mercenaries, often leaving them there without pay. This leaves questions about if the story is conscription or wider resentment or attempts by Turkey and others to undermine SDF control through locals. Poverty and economic failure are also alleged to be a root cause of the tension.
Why is there poverty? The UN and international community have cut off the cross-border crossings into Syria in recent years. This has had the affect of strengthening the Assad regime while weakening the economy of eastern Syria and keeping Turkish-occupied northern Syria totally dependent on Ankara. Syrians are left with few choices. Recent news says the US may cut some support for the SDF and that a small oil concession has also ended in the US-influenced part of Syria. This may all be due to Turkish pressure. Turkey has increased its military role in northern Iraq’s Kurdistan region, building new roads and threatening to send soldiers to Sinjar and other areas, to fully cut off eastern Syria from Iraq. Turkey doesn’t want Syrian oil flowing to Iraq. While Turkey laundered ISIS oil during the war, it doesn’t want any revenues benefiting the SDF. Turkey and Russia have largely partitioned other areas of Syria such as Idlib, where each side gains something.  This means that destroying the economy of places like Manbij to starve them and encourage protests against the SDF is part of the Ankara goal and also a result of the international community’s work with the Assad regime. Manbij itself is close to Assad regime lines, it’s not entirely clear if the SDF were to leave if the area would simply revert to regime control. Another side of this issue is that one of the inherent contradictions in the US policy with the SDF was that while Turkey was permitted to get the US to withdraw from Kurdish areas such as Kobani that had resisted ISIS, the US successfully got the SDF to defeat ISIS near Baghuz and Raqqa, areas with large Arab tribes. What this means is that Turkey’s goal appears to have always been to eject the SDF from Kurdish areas and leave the US with an SDF that controls Arab areas in Syria around Raqqa and the Euphrates. Then Turkey, Iran and the Syrian regime can try to pry those areas loose from the US by encouraging local tribes to resist the SDF. Economically starved and cut off, the SDF would face too many challenges to be effective. Manbij may be the first new attempt by Ankara to reduce SDF influence. It is a small, symbolic example. It may also be simply that the SDF is facing other threats in Manbij based on the impossible economic situation. The fact that Ankara’s media is heralding the US envoy visit to discuss Syria and that it is publishing stories about Syrian opposition to the SDF role, indicates Ankara is watching closely and seeking to benefit.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on June 02-03/2021
Saudi Journalist: Israel Should Respond To Hamas Missiles By Attacking Iranian Targets In The Region
MEMRI/June 02/2021
Iran, Saudi Arabia, Palestine | Special Dispatch No. 9370
In a May 27, 2021 article titled "Netanyahu, I Have a Proposal for You, "Prof. Safouq Al-Shammari, a Saudi journalist, physician and researcher, urges Israel to adopt a new policy that will rein in Hamas and change the rules of the game, both to Israel's benefit and to the benefit of the Arab countries. Specifically, he recommends that Israel respond to the launching of Hamas missiles by attacking Iranian assets in neighboring countries. This, he says, will stop the needless fighting instigated by Iran and protect the lives of civilians, both Palestinian and Israeli.
Writing that Israel contributes to the stability of the region and plays a vital role in confronting Iran's growing military power, Al-Shammari stresses that Israel's focus should be on the head – i.e. on Iran – and not on the tail – i.e. Hamas. Such focus, he explains, will cause Iran to restrain Hamas, thus ending the rocket attacks on Israel and restoring Israel's deterrent power. Furthermore, Israel will gain international and Arab support as the one combating the destruction sown in the region by Iran.
Safouq Al-Shammari (Source: Nippon.com)
The following are translated excerpts from Al-Shammari's article:[1]
"The title of this article may seem somewhat strange, especially since [I am addressing] a prime minister with whom I tend to disagree. However I believe that this disagreement enables us to be more objective, since, when presenting a position to someone you disagree with, emotions play no part. Someone might [also] ask, What is the point of presenting a proposal to the prime minister of a country with which you have no relations? The answer is simple: We have a specific [shared] interest, which I will discuss below…
"[The results] of the last war in Gaza were lamentable and destructive, especially for the civilians. This war was between Israel and Iran's proxy in Gaza, the Hamas movement, and it is possible that neither side suffered as much as the civilians on both sides. Israel bombed thousands of [targets] in densely-populated Gaza, and Hamas launched thousands of rockets. Numerous civilians on both sides were injured and killed.
"What is amazing is that, despite adopting a very pragmatic policy, Israel – or more precisely, Netanyahu, or Bibi, as he is known – does not attempt to punish the chief instigator [responsible] for this ongoing war, i.e. Iran! There is no doubt that, without Iranian incitement, this war would have been shorter, with less damage to civilians and infrastructure. [In fact,] this war could have been over before it began if Israel had performed a simple action, which could prevent all future wars and bring an end to the suffering of the poor civilians, who have nothing to do with these wars! Very simply, what will happen if Israel decides that every rocket fired by Hamas will be met with an attack on Iranian targets in Syria and elsewhere? After all, the Israelis have a list of thousands of Iranian targets in the area. The result will be that Iran will be the one restraining Hamas from launching missiles and [thus] preventing the fighting.
"[What actually happened was that] Israel attacked [Iran's] arm, namely Hamas, harmed the civilians among whom Hamas operatives take cover, while disregarding the head, which is Iran. But if, every time [Hamas launched rockets, Israel] attacked Iranian targets, the world would not have conducted [smear] campaigns against Israel, and perhaps even the Palestinians themselves would have supported these actions and perceived them as revenge for the thousands of Palestinians Iran has killed in Syria. Arab countries would not condemn these actions either, and even the Abraham Accords would be strengthened. Israel would be presented as the country that fights the destruction sown by Iran in the region, and the picture would thus reverse itself: the sweeping Arab and international anger at Israel would turn into satisfaction! The Israeli home front would [also] enjoy quiet, and the Israeli citizens would be protected.
"Israel relies on the principle of deterrence in its military operations, but this time it lost some of its power of deterrence, so much so that Iran [dared to] launch an attack drone against it. If every rocket fired by Hamas was met with a similar Israeli rocket fired on the Iranian forces in Syria or elsewhere, this would be the best possible application of the principle of deterrence. Because Iran is not interested in Hamas or the Palestinians. For Iran, the destruction of Gaza and [even] the death of all Hamas leaders are a mere blip. But the minute the fire burns Iran's hands, it will understand how boiling hot the situation is!
"Again we ask: Why is it important for us to advise the prime minister of Israel? First of all, it is important for us to protect the poor civilians on both sides from [the damages of] war: both those in overcrowded Gaza and also those in Israel. One cannot condemn the killing of civilians and children in Gaza without condemning the killing of civilians in Israel. Second, we don't want another war, or a constant repetition of the same scenario: Iran incites Hamas, Gaza is destroyed, the Arab countries finance its reconstruction, while some of the funds go to the leaders of Hamas and their relatives, who enjoy themselves in hotels while the suffering of the Gazans continues. Thus the money of the Arabs is wasted over and over again for the destruction and rebuilding of Gaza.
"Third, it appears that Israel plays a vital role in the war against Iran's actions in the region though its secret and military operations. These operations are vital to maintaining the stability in the region in the face of the abominable Iranian conduct. An Israeli focus on Iran is crucial at this stage, and is preferable to trying to preoccupy Israel with side campaigns against Hamas and other elements, especially when the U.S. administration is pandering to Iran and trying, along with its allies, to clasp it in a bear hug, which enables its current conduct.
"If the Israeli leaders think that an attack in Gaza and an attempt to assassinate some of the local leaders of Hamas… will teach Hamas a lesson, then they have lost their way. Far from it, Hamas will continue to be the Iranian tail, which will grow ever longer, while the brain that does the planning and the leaders who reap the benefits remain outside [the circle of fighting]. Israel will gain nothing but condemnations for its attacks on Gaza and a worldwide media campaign against it. It will [all] be a waste of time and a distraction from the real problem, which is Iran. However, if the Israeli security apparatuses and army direct against Iran the efforts they devoted to the war on Gaza, the results will be much more positive, and perhaps the Americans will awaken from the illusion that concessions can be made [to Iran], and [understand] that there are other ways to stop the Iranian nuclear program."
[1] Al-Watan (Saudi Arabia), May 27, 2021.

China's Belt and Road Being Built with Forced Labor
Judith Bergman/Gatestone Institute/June 02/2021
Almost all the workers had been deceptively recruited with promises of certain wages and legal work visas. Instead, their passports were confiscated right after they disembarked the plane, leaving them unable to leave unless they paid a heavy fine to the Chinese employer.... They were locked up in poor living and working conditions on the work premises, which were guarded by security guards.... They suffered excessive work hours of up to 12 hours a day, 7 days a week with no holiday allowance... Many workers were injured during work with no access to medical treatment.... After a worker from a Chinese mining company in Indonesia was diagnosed positive for Covid-19 in November 2020, he was put in isolation in an empty dormitory room for more than 20 days without any medical treatment. Later other workers found his dead body.
The Chinese embassy also seems to have actively worked to suppress... complaints.... "Several workers said they tried to call the Chinese Embassy to report that their passports were detained by their employing company. The embassy's reply was that it had no right to intervene and the workers were told to file a report at the local police station. However, these workers, cannot even get out of the gate of the work site, and they also face language barriers. It is quite unrealistic for them to call the local police. — "Silent Victims of Labor Trafficking: China's Belt and Road workers stranded overseas amid Covid-19 pandemic", China Labor Watch, April 30, 2021.
Forced labor exists in two distinct forms in China. One form is modern slavery, not directly sanctioned by the state, as exemplified by the BRI workers mentioned above. According to the 2018 Global Slavery Index, "on any given day in 2016 there were over 3.8 million people living in conditions of modern slavery in China.... This estimate does not include figures on organ trafficking."
The other form of forced labor is systematic and legal under China's penal system. Communist China has used forced labor and labor camps, citing "reeducation", since the 1950s. In 2013, the CCP claimed that it was abolishing the practice, only to reinstate it again some years later to "reeducate" Uyghurs. A study by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, published in September 2020, found that the Chinese government had built nearly 400 detention camps in Xinjiang.
"Tens of thousands of former detainees are likely to have been transferred into forced labour programmes.... They contaminate the supply chains of hundreds of multinational companies with forced labour, and they implicate not only Chinese authorities, but much of the rest of the world in a concerted campaign of ethnic replacement that credible reports suggest may well amount to genocide". — Nathan Ruser, a researcher at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, The Guardian, September 24, 2020.
[A] much less known fact is that China also subjects Tibetans to forced labor on a large and organized scale. In the first seven months of 2020, China drove more than half a million Tibetans into forced labor according to a 2020 report, "Xinjiang's System of Militarized Vocational Training Comes to Tibet," by the Jamestown Foundation.
"The entire Belt and Road initiative is based on forced labor," according to Li Qiang, director of China Labor Watch, an organization that recently published a report detailing the conditions of some overseas Chinese workers who are building China's Belt and Road infrastructure projects across the world. Pictured: Chinese workers building the first rail line linking China to Laos, a key part of Beijing's Belt and Road initiative across the Mekong, on February 8, 2020 in Luang Prabang, Laos.
"The entire Belt and Road initiative is based on forced labor," according to Li Qiang, director of China Labor Watch. "Chinese authorities want the Belt and Road projects for political gain and need to use these workers."
A new report, "Silent Victims of Labor Trafficking: China's Belt and Road workers stranded overseas amid Covid-19 pandemic" by China Labor Watch, published on April 30, details the conditions of some of those overseas Chinese workers, who are building China's Belt and Road infrastructure projects across the world. China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) forms a crucial part of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) foreign policy and is a key tool in China's ambition to become a global superpower.
China Labor Watch spoke to approximately 100 Chinese BRI workers in Indonesia, Algeria, Singapore, Jordan, Pakistan and Serbia. Many shared similar stories. According to the report:
"They were promised a job with good pay to support their families back in China. Upon arriving in the host countries, however, Chinese employers confiscated their passports, and told them that if they wanted to leave early, they had to pay a penalty for breach of contract, which is often equivalent to several months' worth of their salary."
China Labor Watch found that most of the indicators of forced labor in the definition used by the International Labour Organization (ILO) were present concerning the Chinese workers they interviewed.
Almost all the workers had been deceptively recruited with promises of certain wages and legal work visas. Instead, their passports were confiscated right after they disembarked the plane, leaving them unable to leave unless they paid a heavy fine to the Chinese employer. They received no legal work permits, making them illegal workers. They were locked up in poor living and working conditions on the work premises, which were guarded by security guards. If they wanted to leave the premises, they needed permission from the guards. They suffered excessive work hours of up to 12 hours a day, 7 days a week with no holiday allowance and insufficient labor protection and safety equipment. Many workers were injured during work with no access to medical treatment, leading some to permanent disability. After a worker from a Chinese mining company in Indonesia was diagnosed positive for Covid-19 in November 2020, he was put in isolation in an empty dormitory room for more than 20 days without any medical treatment. Later other workers found his dead body. According to the report:
"We have found that in some Chinese steel and mining companies, workers are frequently detained and beaten by the company's security guards due to disobedience, attempting to strike, or other disputes with management. In a WeChat group of Chinese steel workers in Indonesia, someone posted a video of a worker being repeatedly reprimanded and slapped until the uniform was covered with blood from his nose. Then other members of the group commented that a factory's translator was the one who beat them.
"Intimidation and threats are common for controlling Chinese workers in forced labor at some BRI projects. The most commonly used threats include deportation, reprisal after returning home, high fines and penalties. It is also common to force workers to sign a waiver of rights to sue the employer and to force workers to delete evidence of labor rights violations on their phones."
Most workers received "late payments... and unexplained deductions."
"A worker who went to Jordan worked in the desert for five months but only received his salary for the first six days. In Algeria, when an installation project of a subcontracting company was close to completion in 2019 two workers were left behind for maintenance and installation. They could not refuse the arrangement because their employer threatened them with six months of salary that had not yet been paid."
There was no place where the workers could complain.
"Several workers said they tried to call the Chinese Embassy to report that their passports were detained by their employing company. The embassy's reply was that it had no right to intervene and the workers were told to file a report at the local police station. However, these workers, cannot even get out of the gate of the work site, and they also face language barriers. It is quite unrealistic for them to call the local police. Moreover, workers are afraid that they will be punished or fined if the police find out that they do not have legal work status."
The Chinese embassy also seems to have actively worked to suppress their complaints.
"Two volunteers we interviewed who are concerned about stranded overseas Chinese workers told us that what they published on their personal accounts about overseas migrant workers were often deleted by WeChat [a Chinese messaging and social media app] admins within a few hours. Once, after publishing an article mentioning a specific company name, an author received a call from the Chinese Embassy and company executives, telling him to delete the article and not to continue to focus on these workers."
That the Belt and Road Initiative may be based on forced labor, as alleged by the report, is not surprising. Forced labor exists in two distinct forms in China. One form is modern slavery, not directly sanctioned by the state, as exemplified by the BRI workers mentioned above. According to the 2018 Global Slavery Index:
"[O]n any given day in 2016 there were over 3.8 million people living in conditions of modern slavery in China, a prevalence of 2.8 victims for every thousand people in the country. This estimate does not include figures on organ trafficking."
The other form of forced labor is systematic and legal under China's penal system. Communist China has used forced labor and labor camps, citing "reeducation", since the 1950s. In 2013, the CCP claimed that it was abolishing the practice, only to reinstate it again some years later to "reeducate" Uyghurs. According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), the Chinese government has built nearly 400 detention camps in Xinjiang. "By most estimates, about 10% of Uighurs and other Muslim nationalities in Xinjiang have found themselves arbitrarily detained in these camps," according to Nathan Ruser, a researcher at the ASPI.
"Tens of thousands of former detainees are likely to have been transferred into forced labour programmes... Xinjiang's continuing detention camps ...underpin a vast network of labour programmes where consent is impossible. They contaminate the supply chains of hundreds of multinational companies with forced labour, and they implicate not only Chinese authorities, but much of the rest of the world in a concerted campaign of ethnic replacement that credible reports suggest may well amount to genocide".
While the forced labor of Uyghurs has received much international attention in recent years, a much less known fact is that China also subjects Tibetans to forced labor on a large and organized scale. In the first seven months of 2020, China drove more than half a million Tibetans into forced labor, according to a 2020 report, "Xinjiang's System of Militarized Vocational Training Comes to Tibet," by Adrian Zenz for the Jamestown Foundation. According to the report, the CCP has been "reeducating" Tibetans in Tibet in ways that are similar to the forced-labor to which it subjects Uyghurs in Xinjiang. The report states:
"In 2019 and 2020, the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) introduced new policies to promote the systematic, centralized, and large-scale training and transfer of 'rural surplus laborers' to other parts of the TAR, as well as to other provinces of the People's Republic of China (PRC). In the first 7 months of 2020, the region had trained over half a million rural surplus laborers through this policy...The labor transfer policy mandates that... farmers are to be subjected to centralized 'military-style'... vocational training, which aims to reform 'backward thinking' and includes training in 'work discipline,' law, and the Chinese language..."
*Judith Bergman, a columnist, lawyer and political analyst, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
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The self-parody of Algeria’s leaders
Francis Ghiles/The Arab Weekly/June 02/2021
Algeria arguably ranks among top authoritarian states adamant on keeping the international media away. Requests for visas by leading Western media, including the BBC and the New York Times, go unanswered for years. Algeria seldom features in world news. The world media did however take notice when millions marched through towns across the country, week after week for nine months in 2019. Helped by the confinement of COVID-19, the country’s rulers tried to put an end to the Hirak movement which, despite its non-violent clamour for democracy, failed to change the military high command’s mind that Africa’s largest state belonged to it and it alone.
Lone gone are the days when the bravery of Algerian men and women who took on the political and military might of France gained the admiration of many across the world, including the US Senator for Maine, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Long gone are the hopes of economic development fostered in the great days of Third Worldism after independence and the brief interlude of reform in 1988-1992 when a politically pluralistic Algeria seemed possible, even if the impression lasted for a brief few years only. Two years after the fall of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Algerian leaders have locked down 43 million Algerians and lost much of the regional influence which their brilliant diplomats once wielded. They might not even have enough gas to export by 2030 if they do not undertake an urgent restructuring of the oil and gas sector, according to Ali Hached, a former vice-president of the state oil company Sonatrach. That is no mean risk, considering that hydrocarbons account for 97% of Algeria’s foreign income.
In what is arguably one of the best books ever written on Algeria, The Call from Algeria, Robert Malley wrote, a quarter of a century ago: ”As the years go by, and in virtual self-parody, the regime gradually takes on the traits of its most vicious caricatures. Having rattled on for so long in a meaningless, vacuous, monotonous idiom, it has ended up splendidly isolated, cloistered, out of touch, with no one to chat with but itself.”
The raw symbolism of flooding the capital with more police than demonstrators every Friday, cutting off all trains, buses and other means of access speaks of the army’s contempt for the people. General Khaled Nezzar (born 1937) was brought back from exile in Barcelona, last January, to advise President Abdelmajid Tebboune (born in 1945) while General Mohamed Mediene (born in 1939) long dubbed Ras al Jazair (the king of Algiers) is back in a saddle from which he has never quite fallen, that of head of the powerful security. His dishonourable discharge by Bouteflika in 2015, after a quarter of a century in the job was always more akin to shadow boxing than real disgrace. The chief of staff of the army, since January 2020, General Said Chengriha (born in 1945), belongs to the same age group. No wonder a country whose average age is below 30 has ceased to pay attention to the musical chairs.
President Tebboune keeps promising reform and explaining how, in his eyes, the “sacred” Hirak has been hijacked by foreign conspirators. National television rattles on, night after night, about the glorious deeds accomplished by the heroes of the bloody fight for independence, oblivious to the fact that the army and security have confiscated democracy even before the country became independent at the hands the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic. It recently showed a film made by the army entitled Qui vise l’Algerie? La vérité complète (Who is targeting Algeria? The whole truth), a hodgepodge of conspiracy accusations where Kabyle Berbers, Islamists and French operatives are blended into a totally absurd story. In April, the minister of labour El Hachemi Djaaboub accused France of being the “traditional and eternal enemy of Algeria”. The Algerian government then cancelled a visit the French prime minister Jean Castex was due to make, just a few days before it was supposed to take place.
Last month, Tebboune, who usually echoes the military’s positions, accused France of having “massacred half the population of Algeria” during the war of liberation. A historically blatant exaggeration, no doubt. Writer Mouloud Feraoun, a friend of French author Albert Camus who backed the rebellion against France and was murdered by the right-wing Organisation de l’Armée Secrète on the eve of independence, prophesied right after the war started in 1954 that “the indigenous people of Algeria, humiliated yesterday, now tortured and hunted, will end up in slavery, the worst slavery they have known.” Conspiracy theories ill suit rulers who often hold bank accounts abroad, whose children study in Europe and the US. Many of them even carry French passports.
Two characteristics of the Hirak need to be noted. The movement was always stronger among native Berber speakers than among Arab speakers. This allowed the rulers, often Berber speakers, to paint the protest movement as “anti-nationalist” and play up the supposed opposition between Berbers and Arabs, which is in fact one of the creations of colonialism. This fabricated divide was after independence instrumentalised by pan-Arabists as described by Robert Malley in his book. Nor did the Hirak manage to build a real organisation or leadership during the six months it was relatively free to act in 2019. It succeeded in preventing president Bouteflika from standing for a fifth term, which in itself was no mean feat, but it failed to present a platform for reforms. Maybe it was too much to ask for a broad and diverse social movement to come up with answers to these questions in such short a time.
The security forces did all they could to provoke violence among the demonstrators who never rose to the bait, thus putting to rest the deeply-held conviction of many in the West that Algeria was, deep down an atavistically-violent society. Kamal Eddine Fekhar was harassed for years before dying in prison as a result of his hunger strike and medical negligence in May 2019; the former commander of the National Liberation Army Lakhdar Bouregaa ( 1933-2019) died shortly after being released from four months in prison; the former head of the Algerian League of Human Rights, Mostefa Bouchachi was vilified in media campaigns as was the former journalist Fodil Boumala.
The military fear these charismatic figures and treat them harshly while European leaders, so prompt to denounce victims of repression in countries such as Russia, Iran or China stay silent.
French political leaders give both their peers in the EU and Algerians the impression they fear the potential disorder that might accrue from freer politics more than the brutality of the regime. Fear of political Islam, often conflated with terrorism, had often in the past made Western leaders endorse authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and North Africa. There are lingering painful memories of the “Black Decade” but fears of Islamist designs are not anymore among the greatest concerns of Algerians today. Besides, the Hirak’s slogans have showed no sign the popular protest movement was drifting to radical religious views.
Riccardo Fabiani, Project Director, North Africa at International Crisis Group speaks of what he sees as “the incapacity of French diplomats and politicians to think of North Africa, Algeria in particular, as having an identity of its own which is not closely tied to France.”
This failure of political imagination and a narrow view of how best to defend French economic interests speak of a lack of strategic thinking. In the medium term that will undermine France and the EU’s interests in the region and their capacity to influence events. Russia, Turkey and China are gaining ground in Libya, Tunisia and Algeria. This failure of the European political imagination is mirrored in Algeria where no effort has been made to study the Ottoman archives in Istanbul which would allow a reconstruction of a country which for more than three centuries played an important part in the Ottoman empire.
It suits most Algerian leaders to forget their history and define themselves against the background of abuses by a colonial power which a vast majority of their people do not hold responsible for the dead end the country finds itself in today.
The reasons for the re-emergence of Generals Nezzar and Mediene seems to be the result of a decision to close army and security ranks in the wake of the illness which kept Tebboune in a German clinic for months in 2020-2021. The military also wanted to put behind them the divisions created by General Gaid Salah during the nine months when he was the de facto ruler of Algeria in 2019. Gaid Salah dismissed many senior officers, placed his own men in key jobs, thus upsetting the complex game of spoils which passes for politics among the country’s rulers. The battles they engage in are essentially linked to the commissions to be earned in important oil and gas or other industrial or arms contracts. Why is the French company Total winning a contract and not American Occidental ? Why are the gendarmerie suddenly buying the latest Peugeot and Renaults cars when they are already over-equipped with Nissans and Mercedes? The pickings in Algeria’s still moderately rich oil and gas rich economy matter more than ideological fights.
Meanwhile, the US recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara, whether or not it is eventually followed by some European countries, signals an Algerian diplomatic setback in the region. The foreign ministry, like many of its peers in Algiers has been eviscerated by twenty years of mismanagement and corruption under Bouteflika. Never has the key oil and gas sector been in such incompetent hands. A generation of skilled senior civil servants is fading away or has gone into exile to be replaced by far less qualified and worldly people. The leaders talk about diversifying the economy away from hydrocarbons but talking the talk is no more than economic self-parody. General Nezzar and General Chengriha might be professional soldiers but neither of them, nor Tewfik Mediene for that matter, have ever given the impression they are interested, let alone have any understanding of economics.
As they read the tea leaves after next June 12 general elections, observers will have to content themselves with whether the Islamists parties or the ghost of the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) have “gained” or “lost” votes and who the “independents” might well be in a poll which, in all likelihood, will be massively boycotted.
French President Macron has made gestures to recognise France’s colonial misdeeds. However, when he said last November that he would do everything to “help the courageous President Tebboune”, he earned himself a stunning rebuke from Hirak’s charismatic figure Karim Tabbou. “We do not expect any expression of support from France but the public support for one of the most authoritarian and freedom-averse regimes in the Mediterranean only shows your bad faith and hypocrisy.”
The conclusion of this latest episode is that French policy towards Algeria has utterly failed. The old Ottoman game of puppets, karakuz, will resume. In Algeria after the elections the outside world, not least the US which has put North Africa on the back burner, will forget Algeria till the next bump, or accident, down the road. Africa’s largest country, its second largest army will remain as it has been in recent years, a lumbering giant struggling for legitimacy but with nowhere to go.
*Francis Ghilès is an associate fellow at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs. He is a frequent contributor to The Arab Weekly.

Who Started the Gaza War? America did
Tony Badran/The Tablet Magazine/June 02/2021
طوني بدران/مجلة التابلت: من بدأ حرب غزة؟ أميركا هي التي بدأتها
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/99416/tony-badran-the-tablet-magazine-who-started-the-gaza-war-america-did-%d8%b7%d9%88%d9%86%d9%8a-%d8%a8%d8%af%d8%b1%d8%a7%d9%86-%d9%85%d8%ac%d9%84%d8%a9-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%aa%d8%a7%d8%a8%d9%84%d8%aa/
What caused the latest Gaza war between Israel and Hamas? If you’re a consumer of U.S. media, the answer neatly follows an established plot of one of the longest-running TV dramas in America: the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
According to this storyline, a simmering decadeslong local property dispute over three homes in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah exploded into a bloody war in which thousands of missiles were fired and hundreds of Palestinians died, in turn sparking an international crisis.
But how exactly did a potential eviction result in a war? Well, six Palestinian Arab families faced removal from homes which had been appropriated from Jewish families by the Jordanian army in 1948, and where the more recent Palestinian residents had refused to pay rent going back to the 1980s. The prospective eviction is the consequence of legal challenges backed by a “secretive” “U.S.-based settler organization,” the story’s villain who represents the injustice, indeed the racism of Israeli law governing occupied territories. According to this plot line, the cruelty of these “settlers” led to peaceful protests, which later became widespread rallies that drew in other Palestinian communities. Aided by the provocation of settlers and Israeli riot police, including an assault by the Israelis against Palestinian worshippers who were also throwing stones and fireworks from the Al-Aqsa mosque on the last night of Ramadan, the protests then became communal clashes, compounded by the mishandling of religious sensitivities during the Muslim holy month, and by planned marches for the Jerusalem Day celebrations.
In this American television version of events, a pan-Palestinian movement swelled, with expressions of solidarity spreading to Israel and to the diaspora, as Hamas—the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood offshoot that rules in Gaza—decided it could not stand idly by. After all, not only does Hamas aspire to be the principal representative of the Palestinian people, but as a religious movement, it could hardly remain silent in the face of Israeli attempts to “Judaize” Jerusalem and desecrate the Al-Aqsa mosque during Ramadan. Palestinian anger and dignity demanded action. So Hamas provided it: It fired some rockets from Gaza. When the Israelis responded, Hamas had no choice but to up the stakes, and blanket all of central Israel in rocket fire. Israel responded by leveling buildings in Gaza. And so the open sore of Israeli occupation restarted the cycle of violence once more, with tragic losses of life.
Western reporters, analysts, and diplomats pride themselves in their fluent ability to regurgitate this convoluted storyline. Many of them even believe it. In these intersectional times, the “both sides” “cycle of violence” narrative is a mark of sophisticated moderation, especially when compared with the more emotive narrative of an “apartheid” Zionist state that bears sole responsibility for the war through the unrelenting use of occupation and oppression.
At first glance these appear to be different narratives for the same event—one elegant, the other simplistic—but what they share in common is a soap opera-like script masquerading as geopolitical analysis. Neither bears any relationship to the real world.
A war of this scale doesn’t just “happen.” One hundred rocket salvos targeting major population centers are not an organic “response” to perceived “humiliation” by “the Palestinian street”; they are strategic choices made by people with the resources to produce, deploy, and fire large numbers of weapons of war. The account of internal Palestinian competition—of Hamas trying to one-up Fatah after Mahmoud Abbas canceled elections in the West Bank for the fourth time in recent memory—is likewise not a convincing explanation for the outbreak of armed conflict.
In order to understand the outbreak of the Gaza war, and who won or lost, it is necessary to understand the strategic aims of the actors involved.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad (PIJ) fired over 4,300 rockets in this latest round of fighting, more than in all of Operation Protective Edge, the 2014 war that lasted more than five weeks longer. Rockets are provided to Gaza by Iran, and stockpiled over years. The infrastructure supporting the war effort in Gaza—including extensive tunnels, drones, and facilities for rocket production, assembly, and storage—are likewise overseen and technically supported by Iran, as Hamas leaders like Yahya Sinwar have acknowledged. “If not for Iran’s support,” Sinwar recently gloated, “we would not have obtained these capabilities.” At the end of the fighting in May, the Doha-based Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh also thanked Iran for its support.
Iran’s investment in Gaza goes well beyond the tens of millions of dollars it costs to build and maintain armaments and tunnels. Iranian assistance extends to the training of armed cadres that deploy these assets, and the organizational structures that maintain these cadres, support their families, recruit more terrorists, and put down rivals. In short, Hamas is the kind of strategic asset that requires immense amounts of money, materiel, training, effort, and support from a patron; once expended it can take many years to rebuild. No patron can afford to treat such an expense lightly, or to create that kind of asset without exerting some measure of control over its use.
Iran’s ties to the various factions in Gaza are longstanding and extensive. Whereas PIJ is more widely recognized as a direct proxy of the Iranians, Hamas’ portfolio of diplomatic and economic relations with countries like Qatar and Turkey tend to obscure the exclusivity of its military dependence on Iran. Moreover, as Brig. Gen. (ret.) Shimon Shapira told Tablet in 2014, Iran has bypassed Hamas’ political leadership, which is largely dependent on the assistance of foreign countries, by developing direct relationships with its military commanders, who actually manage the arsenal of Iran supplies. Jonathan Schanzer, an expert on Hamas and head of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (where we are colleagues), concurs that “the top commanders and fighters of Hamas have all trained in Iran.” Consequently, he added, “it is hard to say the group is not a full proxy. There is ongoing and careful coordination with Tehran.”
The framing for the latest Gaza war was in fact provided not by Jerusalem or Gaza City but by Tehran. Four days before the rocket fire started, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, set the tone in his Quds Day speech by attacking the “normalization of relations” between Arab states and Israel as a failure. “Today,” Khamenei declared, “the balance of power has swung.”
The connection between rockets from Gaza and “Israeli provocation in Jerusalem” was thus made by the Iranian government. Muhammad Deif, Hamas’ military commander who works directly with the Iranians, came out with the threat that Israel’s activities in Jerusalem would incur a “heavy price.” The last time Deif had made a public statement was during the 2014 war. Hamas’ representative in Iran, Khaled al-Qaddumi, later explained that “the resistance will not allow Israeli occupation forces to attack civilian targets in Al-Quds,” further highlighting the Iranian imprint.
If any doubt remained that the Gaza war was part of an Iranian strategic framework, it was put to rest when the Islamic Republic’s most prominent regional commander, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, personally addressed Israel’s leadership after the fighting ended, formalizing the threat equation of “the Al-Aqsa mosque and Al-Quds for an armed confrontation.” Nasrallah repeated Khamenei’s message, attacking “the project of [Arab-Israeli] normalization, the path of normalization, and the normalizing states.”
Iran’s emphasis on Jerusalem raises a key question: Why did a major war erupt under the pretext of defending that city only now, in the first few months of the Biden administration? Why didn’t it happen when the Trump administration moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, which was widely seen as a certain catalyst of violence? Or why not in response to repeated Israeli pledges to build thousands of new housing units in East Jerusalem?
The answer lies in the international context of the war, referenced in the public remarks of the Iranians and their proxies. As with the war in 2014, the strategic backdrop is the pivot being executed by the same U.S. team—let’s call it Team Obama-Biden—to seal a wide-ranging partnership with Iran, which Michael Doran and I have called the Realignment. Tellingly, the war in Gaza erupted while U.S. and Iranian negotiators were finalizing the details, just before the U.S. announcement of lifting sanctions on Iran and returning to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear deal.
The Iranian framing of a new “balance of power” fits seamlessly with the U.S. administration’s declared priorities. As part of its regional Realignment doctrine, the Biden administration has moved away from the Abraham Accords as fast as it can, openly denigrating the agreements as a sideshow or failure. At times, the public disdain the administration shows for the accords has reached comic and almost pathological extremes, as officials—including State Department spokesman and former Obama White House aide Ned Price—refuse to even utter the words “Abraham Accords.” Instead, the administration pointedly uses the same terminology as Khamenei and Nasrallah: “normalization.”
How did peace between Israel and the Gulf states become such an obstacle to U.S. Middle East policy? As all the actors involved understood, the Abraham Accords represented the framework for a U.S.-led camp of regional allies to cooperate in the face of common challenges, specifically those posed by Iran. This security architecture is what Team Obama-Biden’s Realignment doctrine fundamentally rejects. Either you are for the Abraham Accords, in which the Gulf states and Israel unite under the U.S. security umbrella to contain Iran, or you are for the Iran deal, in which the U.S. shifts its weight behind Iran as the future American-backed nuclear power in the Middle East.
The point of Realignment is to create the opposite regional order of that imagined by the Abraham Accords. In this new order, the United States and Iran are partners, and Washington recognizes Iranian spheres of influence. Consequently, the Biden administration shares with Iran the goal of burying the Abraham Accords, and consigning its remnants to the dustbin as fast as possible. More specifically, the Biden administration wants to torpedo any prospect of an Israeli-Saudi agreement—the unfinished piece of the Abraham Accords framework. The administration’s shared goal with Iran of preventing an Israeli-Saudi agreement was therefore served by the Iranians’ war in Gaza.
“The major actors in Middle East power politics are not ‘peoples’ or ‘streets’ but states.”
What the conventional Israeli-Palestinian “cycle of violence” narratives fail to comprehend is the basic fact that the major actors in Middle East power politics are not “peoples” or “streets” but states—and the most powerful states determine the range of political possibilities. In this context, the key actors aren’t the Palestinians, who are a divided, subject polity, or Israel, which had no interest in a Gaza war. The actors that really count are Iran and the United States.
By reemphasizing the centrality of the Palestinian quest for statehood, the Biden administration advances its shared aim with Iran of boxing in Israel and its Gulf state allies. Elevating the Palestinian issue is a way to block any movement forward between the Israelis and the Saudis, keeping Israel off balance and preoccupied in a dead-end process, while legitimating the Iranian claim to regional primacy. It is no coincidence that the twin initiatives that cemented President Barack Obama’s legacy—and which he tried to lock in through United Nations Security Council resolutions on his way out of the White House—were the Iran nuclear deal (UNSCR 2231) and endorsing the rejectionist Arab position on Israel and the 1967 lines (UNSCR 2334).
The Biden administration’s determination to implement Obama’s Iran doctrine and bring the Palestinians back to the forefront of regional priorities is a return to a familiar script. Historically, using the Palestinians as a device to keep moderate Arab states from cooperating with Israel is a well-established template for rejectionist regimes like Assad’s Syria. Iran has taken over and mastered the leadership of this rejectionist camp. As for the Palestinian factions, they know the play by heart, as it encompasses nearly the entire history of the Palestinian national movement.
With the concomitant abandonment of the Abraham Accords and the revival of the Palestinian national sideshow, Realignment places the United States firmly on the side of its erstwhile foes and opposite the interests of its traditional friends. The U.S. regional policy shift to which Khamenei and Nasrallah alluded, and which Iran sought to assist with the Gaza war, requires not only recognizing Iranian spheres of influence, but also funding through the lifting of sanctions and providing “civilian” U.S. support to “rebuild” Iranian satrapies like Gaza and Yemen.
The most curious part of all this is watching the United States assume leading sponsorship of the rejectionist Arab camp—which, practically speaking, contains no Arabs.
*Tony Badran is Tablet magazine’s Levant analyst and a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He tweets @AcrossTheBay. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.