Hamas in the New Middle East

Hamas in the New Middle East

    Saturday, November 24, 2012   No comments

“I salute all people of the Arab Spring, or Islamic winter, and I salute the Syrian people who seek freedom, democracy and reform.” Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya issued this declaration before a crowd at the Al Azhar Mosque in Cairo on February 24, 2012.

In 2011, Hamas withdrew its political headquarters from Syria and declined Bashar Al-Assad’s request to stage rallies in support of the Syrian regime at Palestinian refugee camps in Syria. Haniya's statement simply confirmed that Hamas had officially broken ties with its longtime state sponsor in Damascus. The Arab Awakening ended the alliance that Hamas had formed with the Assad regime in the aftermath of the Palestinian group’s expulsion from Jordan in 1999.

The Syrian uprising placed Hamas in between a rock and a hard place. Even as Hamas sought to remain loyal to a regime that had provided economic aid and weapons during times of isolation, the group could not maintain an alliance with a regime that was brutally oppressing a Sunni-led opposition movement. Hamas' final calculation that severing ties with Assad would best further its long-term objectives was driven by an assessment of the Syrian crisis, particularly with respect to Palestinian refugees in Syria and Palestinian public opinion. However, the rising wave of democratic and moderate Sunni Islamism throughout the region was perhaps Hamas’ greatest incentive to break ties with Syria and pursue alliances with Egypt, Turkey, and Qatar.

Hamas is betting that new geopolitical realities in the region may offer it an opportunity to escape isolation, gain recognition as the legitimate representative of the Palestinians in Gaza, spread its ideology, and cultivate ties with neighbors. Nonetheless, by breaking ties with Assad and cultivating ties with Tehran’s strategic competitors, Hamas is jeopardizing its relations with Iran as well.

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Israel targets journalists, media buildings in Gaza

Israel targets journalists, media buildings in Gaza

    Sunday, November 18, 2012   No comments

By Ernesto Londoño, Karin Brulliard and Abigail Hauslohner, Updated: Sunday, November 18, 7:40 AM

TEL AVIV — The Israeli military struck two buildings used by journalists in Gaza early Sunday during the fifth day of a campaign against militants in the Palestinian enclave. Hours later, artillery rounds landed in southern Israeli cities and the country’s missile defense system intercepted a powerful long-range rocket over Tel Aviv, the second such incident in as many days.

Sunday’s strikes in Gaza suggested Israel is continuing to expand its range of targets after hitting almost exclusively military sites during the first few days of the operation, dubbed Pillar of Defense. On Saturday, an Israeli bomb demolished the office of Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. The crossfire dimmed hopes for a ceasefire as Arab leaders led by Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi were set to convene in Cairo on Sunday to discuss a negotiated end to the conflict.

“We are extracting a heavy price from Hamas and the terror organizations,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday during the opening session of the weekly cabinet meeting. “The army is prepared to significantly expand the operation.”

The sites hit in Gaza early Sunday included buildings used by Britain’s Sky News channel and the Dubai-based pan-Arab broadcaster al-Arabiya, the news organizations reported. At least six journalists were wounded, according to a health ministry spokesman in Gaza quoted by wire services.

One of the buildings was used by al-Quds channel, which serves as a mouthpiece for Hamas, the militant group that rules Gaza. The Foreign Press Association in Israel issued a letter expressing concern and noting that a United Nations Security Council resolution says that journalists covering conflict civilians that must be protected.

The Israeli military said the sites struck overnight included a “communications antenna used by Hamas to carry out terrorist activity.” In a statement, it said it also hit dozens of underground rocket launchers and a Hamas training base.

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Mahmoud Abbas, President, Palestinian Authority

Mahmoud Abbas, President, Palestinian Authority

    Saturday, September 29, 2012   No comments

MAHMOUD ABBAS, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and President of the Palestinian National Authority, said attacks by the “terrorist militias” of Israeli settlers had become a daily reality, with at least 535 attacks perpetrated since the start of 2012. Palestinians faced relentless waves of attacks against their mosques, churches, homes and schools. Increased attacks should not surprise anyone; they stemmed from a policy that prioritized settlements and a racist climate fuelled by a “culture of incitement” in the Israeli curriculum and extremist declarations.

Since the Assembly’s last session, Israel had continued its settlement campaign in Jerusalem and its environs, he said, aiming at altering the city’s historic character. It was a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” against Palestinians by demolishing homes, revoking residency rights, denying basic services, closing institutions and impoverishing people through a “siege” of walls and checkpoints. Settlement building continued throughout the West Bank, while attacks persisted against the Gaza Strip. He urged that Israel be compelled to respect the Geneva Conventions, lift the blockade of Gaza and investigate the detention of Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli jails.

He said Israel continued to impose severe restrictions on movement, preventing the Palestinian National Authority from implementing infrastructure projects and providing services to its citizens. Its overall policy was undermining the Authority’s ability to carry out its functions and implement its obligations. Such actions were taking place amid an Israeli political discourse that brandished extremist positions, which incited religious conflict. “This is something we firmly reject,” he said, stressing that such discourse only fuelled those trying to use tolerant monotheistic religions as ideological justification for terrorism.

To surmount that impasse, Palestinians had held exploratory talks with Israel at the start of the year, upon Jordan’s initiative, he said, and had made efforts to create favourable conditions to resume negotiations. But Israel’s actions in his homeland and position on permanent status issues had led him to conclude that Israel rejected the two-State solution. A State of Palestine coexisting alongside Israel represented the “historic compromise” of the Oslo Declaration of Principles adopted 19 years ago under United States auspices, by which Palestinians had accepted to establish their State on only 22 per cent of the territory of historic Palestine. Israeli measures aimed to empty the Oslo Accords of their meaning, making their implementation extremely difficult if not impossible.

Further, Israel refused to seriously discuss the issue of Palestinian refugees, he said, and continued its occupation of Palestinian water basins, agricultural land, air, skies and borders. It refused to allow Palestinians to attain their rights and rejected the independence of a State of Palestine. “I speak on behalf of an angry people,” he said, calling Israel’s evasion of accountability a license for it to continue its policy of dispossession and ethnic cleansing.

Despite the complexity of the reality and all the frustration, “there is still a chance — maybe the last — to save the two-State solution and to salvage peace,” he said, urging a new approach based on an understanding that a racist “settler colonization” must be condemned, punished and boycotted. It also required reaffirmation of and adherence to the terms of reference endorsed by the United Nations. Marathon talks were not needed, but rather the sincere intention to reach peace. The approach must include realization of an independent Palestinian State, with East Jerusalem as its capital, over all territory occupied by Israel since 1967, as well as an agreed solution to the Palestinian refugee issue, in line with resolution 194 (III), as prescribed in the Arab Peace Initiative.

The international community must now uphold its responsibilities, he said. He called on the Security Council to adopt a resolution on the foundations for a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which would be the basis and foundation and serve as a “binding reference” if the two-State solution was to survive. The independence and freedom of a State of Palestine was a sacred right that must be realized. The Palestinian National Authority had affirmed its ability to create an advanced model for a modern State, achievements recognized by the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee and the World Bank, among others. A year ago, he had submitted the application for consideration by the Security Council to allow the State of Palestine to assume its rightful place in the United Nations, efforts that were aborted despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of countries supported them. A year later, “ Palestine” was playing its role in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) with high professionalism.

His Government would continue its efforts to obtain full membership for Palestine at the United Nations, he said, and had begun consultations with regional organizations and Member States aimed at having the General Assembly adopt, during this session, a resolution considering the State of Palestine as a non-Member State of the United Nations. Today, 77 per cent of Palestinians were younger than 35 years old and they would not allow a new Nakba to occur. All Palestinians would continue to survive on their beloved land, every inch of which carried evidence of their roots. “There is no homeland for us except Palestine,” he said. Palestinians would continue peaceful resistance, in line with international humanitarian law, against the occupation for the sake of freedom, independence and peace. “Let peace be victorious before it is too late,” he said.

Nigeria's Perfect Storm

Nigeria's Perfect Storm

    Tuesday, January 17, 2012   No comments

By Francis Njubi Nesbitt

Boko Haram militia member

Nigeria is facing a perfect storm of crises including a national strike, widespread protests, and sectarian violence in the north. Although the strikes, attacks, and protests raise the specter of another civil war in Africa’s biggest oil producer, the United States and the international community should avoid aggravating the situation by seeming to encourage a military solution.

Much of the violence in the north is blamed on an Islamist sect called Boko Haram, which means, “Western education is sinful.” Boko Haram emerged as a religious sect in 2002 but ramped up its antigovernment rhetoric and sectarian violence after security forces arrested and killed its founder, Mohamed Yusuf, in 2009. Hundreds of sect members died in the operation. In response, sect members killed over 800 people. Since then, the movement has adopted terrorist tactics including car bombs, drive-by shootings, and raids on churches. Its most spectacular attack was a car bombing of the UN headquarters in Abuja, the nation’s capital city in August 2010. 

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The quiet war in Saudi Arabia

The quiet war in Saudi Arabia

    Monday, January 16, 2012   No comments

by Joshua Jacobs*

Demonstrators in Qatif, eastern Saudi Arabia.

While western powers have been happy to use Saudi Arabia as an ally to ratchet up the pressure on Assad's beleaguered regime in Syria, it has not caught a whiff of the silent crackdown occurring within the kingdom. Since late November the protest movement which was largely snuffed out last spring has returned to the streets in force, largely centered on the oil rich and largely Shia Eastern Province.

The Saudi response was both brutal and predictable. Security forces shot and killed three protesters and wounded many more over several days of crackdowns in the eastern city of Qatif. Clashes continued throughout December as demonstrators battled security forces who routinely utilized live ammunition. In a series of retaliatory raids on the homes and districts of protest sympathizers hundreds were arrested and wounded. The killings along with the continued discrimination and mistreatment of the Shia of the Eastern Province has formed the basis of the current protest movement - a protest movement that has suffered heavily like its neighbour in Bahrain, but with little in the way of a headline.

Today, while attention was focused on the Strait of Hormuz, on Syria, and on the rising tensions in Bahrain, Saudi security forces launched an assault on the city of Awamiyah killing at least one and wounding half a dozen more. Eye witnesses have stated that soldiers on trucks opened fire on demonstrators, hitting many as they fled. The attack bears all the hallmarks of a planned operation with electricity being cut to the area prior to the assault. The area at the time of writing is apparently still under military lock-down and reflects a state of siege with clashes continuing to occur and gunfire being heard.

This attack was almost certainly condoned by the royal family and comes on the heels of a series of indictments against demonstrators and high profile invectives against the protest movement. Despite this attack and others like it, the rumblings and tremors of protest and crackdown show no sign of abatement. Indeed in the past few months they have once again reared their head in the south west in Najran and Jazan, compounded with protests over women’s rights in Riyadh and Buraydah.

These protests bear all the hallmarks of a movement which could coalesce and burst anew from the ashes of the disjointed and largely suppressed protests of last spring. They also come at an extremely troubling time for the kingdom. The death of Crown Prince Sultan highlighted the geriatric character of the upper echelons of the ruling family, and the potential uncertainty and disquiet surrounding the issue of succession. Meanwhile, continuing tensions in the Strait of Hormuz and rising furor on the streets of Bahrain open up the risk of unrest spreading to the kingdom in a domino effect. Indeed the extremely aggressive Saudi position on Bahrain and the continued quartering of troops in the tiny island monarchy has a direct relationship to their fears of domestic instability. The possibility of Saudi Shia rallying on behalf of their co-religionists in Bahrain, or vice versa is a looming threat that the Saudis are taking great pains to neutralize.

Though the protests currently centre on a single province, the Eastern Province is home to the majority of Saudi energy reserves, terminals, and processing facilities. Disruption and upheaval in this province has a disproportionate impact on Saudi Arabia. A protracted and visible uprising would not only weaken the Saudi government internally but could have a tumultuous impact on the global energy market. This is all the more reason for not only the media, but for western governments to begin taking an active interest in the ongoing street conflict.

Saudi rulers certainly understand the threat posed by the protesters and the risk of an expanding movement: their actions are a testament to that fact. So why is the world’s media apparently incapable of recognizing the same thing? Arab media has been noticeably silent, with the two largest Arab media entities the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya and the Qatari-owned al-Jazeera having said almost nothing. However there is little excuse for western media. Saudi Arabia is probably America's most important Arab ally, the world’s most important single energy node, and one of the most influential countries in the region. It's also experiencing its worst domestic upheavals since its rebellions of the early 1980's. Taken in a vacuum this is a significant news story. When set against the context of the unfolding drama in the Gulf and the wider contours of the Arab Spring, it is incredible.

The past year was a bad one for Saudi Arabia: the coming year augurs to be even worse. The time has come to slice through the veil Saudi Arabia has kept around its crackdown and recognize that the Arab Spring at least in limited form has hit the kingdom. What comes next is difficult to say, but with the rapidity of change that the Arab Spring has introduced us to, it would be wise to pay close attention to the warning signs as they appear. It is entirely possible that we will see a very, very, warm spring in Saudi Arabia.

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*Joshua Jacobs is a Gulf Policy Analyst and published columnist at the Institute for Gulf Affairs.