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Israel

Geopolitics

The Syrian Rapprochement With The Arab World Is Far From Complete

Despite the official "consensus" by Arab League nations to welcome Syria back to the organization after 12 years of suspension, several key countries were opposed on principal — including key questions still open in North Africa.

ALGIERS — Algerian diplomacy may appear strengthened by the Arab League's recent decision to reintegrate Syria. Yet neighboring Morocco conversely finds itself in an uncomfortable position.

After mirroring Saudi Arabia's position on nearly all regional issues, Morocco was caught off guard when the country decided to support Syria's reintegration.

On May 7 in Cairo, foreign ministers of Arab League nations agreed to welcome Syria back to the organization after 12 years of suspension.

This reinstatement will be subject to certain conditions imposed on Syria, including the return of refugees, facilitating the passage of international humanitarian aid across borders and working on preparations to hold elections.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is expected to attend the Arab summit scheduled in Saudi Arabia on May 19.

The decision was made by consensus, meaning it was accepted by all member countries, including those, like Morocco, who vehemently opposed this option just a few weeks ago.

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A New Palestinian Martyr, And Israel's "Other" Crisis That Won't Go Away

A Palestinian has died from a hunger strike in an Israeli prison, exacerbating the cycle of violence in the region. Israeli's protesting Benjamin Netanyahu''s right-wing government have little to offer to resolve the eternal crisis of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

-Analysis-

Khader Adnan, a 44-year-old leader of the radical Palestinian organization Islamic Jihad, had been imprisoned in Israel for the 10th time when he began his third hunger strike on February 5, which would prove to be fatal. The resident of Jenin in the West Bank was found unconscious in his cell Tuesday, and declared dead upon arrival at the hospital after 86 days of refusing food and medical care.

Israeli authorities claim that Adnan had refused all assistance, but an Israeli medical NGO asserts that Israel denied a request for hospitalization as his condition deteriorated.

Islamic Jihad immediately declared Adnan a "martyr," though he was accused of "endorsing terrorism," and rocket fire was reported after his death from Gaza , the organization's stronghold. However, the widow of the Palestinian activist addressed the leaders of the jihadist group: "You did nothing to save him while he was alive, so do nothing after his death," she said. "It is my nine sons who will avenge their father in due course."

The ancient "eye-for-an-eye" law of revenge is still holding strong.

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This Happened - April 11: Adolf Eichmann On Trial

The trial of Adolf Eichmann began on this day in 1961, in Jerusalem, Israel. Eichmann was captured by Israeli agents in Argentina in 1960 and brought to Israel to stand trial.

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On Israel's 'Phony' Fight For Democracy

Praise in the West has been heaped on the popular protests in Israel that have halted undemocratic judicial reform proposed by the Netanyahu government. But this supposedly noble fight for democracy doesn't apply to 20% of its citizens, not to mention the policies carried out in the Occupied Territories.

-OpEd-

Protests against proposed justice system reforms have rocked Israel for weeks. Opposition to the reforms proposed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government — the most right-wing, xenophobic government in Israel's history — have been described in newspapers around the world as an example of people fighting to defend their democracy.

But for many Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, who have largely chosen not to participate in the protests, these are not demonstrations for democracy.

Palestinians, who make up 20% of Israel's population, have stayed home during the anti-government demonstrations because “the protesters are not calling for democracy for all citizens of the country, but only for the Jewish ones, thus perpetuating inequality and occupation," Ibrahim Husseini writes in Al-Araby Al-Jadid.

“Even before the current government of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel was a phony, reprehensible and completely anomalous democracy," the Balad party, a nationalist, left-wing Arab political party in Israel, wrote in a statement.

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Israel
Pierre Haski

Bibi Blinked: Can Netanyahu Survive After Backing Down On Judicial Putsch?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu has backed down in the 11th hour on his plans to push forward on a major judicial reform bill that had sparked massive protests.

-Analysis-

Benjamin Netanyahu played the sorcerer's apprentice and lost. By announcing Monday night the suspension of his judicial reform, which has deeply divided Israeli society and brought hundreds of thousands of people onto the nation's streets, he signed his defeat.

One thing we know about the Israeli prime minister is that he has not said his last word: the reform is only suspended, not withdrawn. He promised a "real dialogue" after the Passover holiday.

Netanyahu is not one to back down easily: he had clearly gone too far, first by allying himself with extreme right-wing forces from the fringes of the political spectrum; but above all by wanting to change the balance on which the Jewish State had lived since its foundation in 1948. His plans threatened to change the nature of the state in a patently "illiberal" direction.

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Geopolitics
Dominique Moïsi

U.S., France, Israel: How Three Model Democracies Are Coming Unglued

France, Israel, United States: these three democracies all face their own distinct problems. But these problems are revealing disturbing cracks in society that pose a real danger to hard-earned progress that won't be easily regained.

"I'd rather be a Russian than a Democrat," reads the t-shirt of a Republican Party supporter in the U.S.

"We need to bring the French economy to its knees," announces the leader of the French union Confédération Générale du Travail.

"Let's end the power of the Supreme Court filled with leftist and pro-Palestinian Ashkenazis," say Israeli government cabinet ministers pushing extreme judicial reforms

The United States, France, Israel: three countries, three continents, three situations that have nothing to do with each other. But each country appears to be on the edge of a nervous breakdown of what seemed like solid democracies.

How can we explain these political excesses, irrational proclamations, even suicidal tendencies?

The answer seems simple: in the United States, in France, in Israel — far from an exhaustive list — democracy is facing the challenge of society's ever-greater polarization. We can manage the competition of ideas and opposing interests. But how to respond to rage, even hatred, borne of a sense of injustice and humiliation?

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Geopolitics
Pierre Haski

"Palestinians Don't Exist" — The Israeli Minister's Shock Declaration That Can't Be Unsaid

In a speech in Paris, Bezalel Smotrich, Israel's finance minister, denied the existence of the Palestinians, sparking angry reactions in Ramallah, Amman and Brussels. But Israel's extreme right is not afraid of provoking a violent crisis with the Palestinians.

-Analysis-

PARIS — Bezalel Smotrich would like to set fire to the Palestinian Territories. This is not the first time the Israeli Minister of Finance has made such an inflammatory statement. But what he said on Sunday evening in Paris has provoked a strong reaction.

The far-right leader, who lives in a West Bank settlement and is now a minister in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition, said what he was thinking: "The Palestinian people are an invention which is less than 100 years old. Do they have a history, a culture? No, they don't. There are no Palestinians. There are just Arabs."

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This Happened

This Happened - March 17: Golda Meir's Rise To The Top

Golda Meir became the Prime Minister of Israel on this day in 1969, following the resignation of Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. She was the first woman to hold the position in Israel and one of the few female leaders in the world at the time.
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Geopolitics
Pierre Haski

Israel And The West: The Crisis Is Real

Israel's judicial reforms by its far-right government have been met by widespread protests. Now the country risks breaking long-formed bonds with key allies in the West.

-Analysis-

PARIS — Which country in the world has just refused to receive Josep Borrell, Europe's top diplomat? Which country has a finance minister who travels to the United States and France without making any contact with the governments of these two countries?

That country is Israel, which is not used to being a near pariah in the Western world. It is true that the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was received in Paris by French President Emmanuel Macron, and also in Rome by Italian Council President Giorgia Meloni, and is currently in Berlin to meet with Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

But if Israel's head of state, with decades of personal relationships with both European and American leaders behind him, is received, it might not always be to have his government's choices praised.

At the heart of the problem lingers the political crisis that was triggered by the coalition that Netanyahu has built with the far right in Israel: the latter is carrying out a judicial reform deemed undemocratic by a large part of Israeli society. The protests that have been going on for weeks have a real international impact.

It is a sign of real unease when it did not even take three months to see such a deterioration in relations.

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Geopolitics
Pierre Haski

Israel's Parallel Crises, And The Whiff Of Civil War

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's return to power with the most right-wing government in the country's history has revealed a deep schism in Israeli society between settlers and secularists.

-Analysis-

Israeli society is facing an intense and unprecedented moment in its history. There have been other protest movements in the past, such as the hundreds of thousands of people gathered against the war in Lebanon in 1982 or the economic demonstration of tents on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv in 2011.

But in the current wave of protests, there is an existential dimension. It's different than during wars, where it's been literally the physical survival of the Israeli state; this is rather existential in its identity, political system, and the weight of religion.

This is sometimes difficult to understand from the outside, where we often view this part of the world through the lens of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is also escalating. An attack in Tel Aviv on Thursday reminded us that the two crises are evolving in parallel.

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Ideas
Pierre Haski

Netanyahu's Extremist Blitz Is Reaching Its End Game

By challenging Israel's constitutional system and launching a crackdown on the Occupied Territories, Benjamin Netanyahu is playing a high-stakes game opposed by half his country and the country's allies. It can't last much longer.

-Analysis-

In just two months, the most right-wing coalition in Israel's history has achieved a tour de force.

Perhaps because its days are numbered, it has begun a lightning-fast institutional transformation of the Jewish state in a sharply "illiberal" direction; it has taken steps to achieve the de facto annexation of part of the West Bank; it has blown hard on the burning embers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; it has divided Israel as rarely before; and finally, it has begun to alienate the support of its main diplomatic partners around the world.

Undoubtedly, this summary may seem excessive to those who observe Israel with the lasting indulgence of disappointed lovers; and insufficient to those who didn't need the return of Benjamin Netanyahu, along with his new friends, to have a strong opinion against Israeli government policy.

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This Happened

This Happened - February 25: The Hebron Massacre

On this day in 1994, Israeli terrorist Baruch Goldstein entered the Cave of the Patriarchs, a holy site for Jews and Muslims, and opened fire on Muslim worshippers, killing 29 people and injuring more than 100 others.

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