A Mid-East Journal

Gaza’s anti-Hamas militias

2026-08-18T03:36:07.852+01:00

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 18 August 2026

Hamas's internal security and counter-intelligence apparatus in Gaza includes a specialized unit known as the Radaa Force. It is focused on monitoring threats to Hamas from rival factions, and in identifying dissidents, suspected informants and “collaborators” working with Israel.

The size, command structure, and exact responsibilities of the Radaa Force are uncertain; Hamas has revealed few details about it. Its name derives from an Arabic root meaning “deterrence” or “prevention”.

On August 6 Radaa issued an appeal to the Gazan public in general, and to members of anti-Hamas militia groups in particular, urging them to assassinate the leaders of those bodies.

“We say to all members of the collaborator gangs,” ran the Radaa Force statement, “that assassinating senior collaborators in these groups will be your salvation – before us, and before your people.”

What are these anti-Hamas militia groups, and who are their leaders?

The most internationally visible, and arguably most consequential, of the anti-Hamas armed network in Gaza is known as the “Popular Forces”. Originally led by Yasser Abu Shabab until his death in December 2025, it is now under the leadership of Ghassan Duhine, his deputy. It is the only anti-Hamas force that appears to have reached battalion-scale strength. Estimates in open sources range up to 700 fighters.

The Popular Forces emerged in southern Gaza, especially around Rafah. On June 5, 2025, in a video statement responding to allegations by former defense minister Avigdor Lieberman, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged that Israel had "activated" and supported clans in Gaza opposed to Hamas. Subsequent reporting by the Associated Press and other outlets identified Abu Shabab's Popular Forces as one of the groups receiving such support.

Reported assistance included weapons, intelligence, logistical support, access to Israeli-controlled areas, and protection from Hamas. The reported activities of the Popular Forces include an attack on a Hamas facility near Khan Younis that the group alleged was being used to store aid confiscated by Hamas. They also participate in intelligence gathering against Hamas, securing aid convoys and routes near Israeli-controlled areas, and protecting access routes to aid distribution points.

Unlike Fatah, the Popular Forces do not prioritize Palestinian nationalism or a state-building ideology. Abu Shabab publicly condemned the brutal onslaught on October 7, 2023 and argued Hamas had brought catastrophe on Gaza.

Politically, this group is the least clearly ideological of the major formations. Its motivations seem to combine anti-Hamas hostility, tribal autonomy, economic interests, personal power, and dependence upon Israeli patronage. Its principal political proposition is effectively that Hamas must be removed and that local Palestinian actors should assume control.

The Popular Forces’ politics are moved partly by clan interests. The Abu Shabab clan is a large family network in the Rafah area of southern Gaza, connected to the larger transborder Tarabin tribal network, which extends into Sinai. Its priorities are protecting its local influence, its territory, economic resources, and clan autonomy.

Hamas has traditionally sought to subordinate armed groups and local power brokers to its own authority. During periods when Hamas's control has weakened because of war, some clans – the Popular Forces among them – have sought to expand their own security and political roles.

The second particularly important anti-Hamas organization in Gaza is the Counter-Terrorism Strike Force (CTSF), centered on Khan Younis and commanded by Hussam al-Astal. Al-Astal has a security service background within the Palestinian Authority, and his opposition to Hamas is more political and institutional than purely tribal.

The declared objective of the CTSF (sometimes known simply as the Anti-Terror Force), is the removal of Hamas and the establishment of an alternative security authority. Al-Astal portrays his organization as an independent Palestinian anti-Hamas force, though there is significant evidence of operational cooperation with Israel.

The group crossed an important threshold on January 12, 2026, when gunmen killed Mahmoud al-Astal, a senior Hamas police officer. Hussam al-Astal's organization publicly claimed responsibility. Hamas described the perpetrators as Israeli collaborators.

The common surname is almost certainly not accidental. Mahmoud al-Astal and Hussam al-Astal appear to have belonged to the same extended al-Astal clan, but they were aligned with opposing political-military camps. Publicly available sources do not identify their precise familial relationship.

The Hellis clan represents a third category of anti-Hamas groupings.

The Hellis family, long associated with Fatah, has opposed Hamas's rule ever since the terrorist organization seized control of Gaza in 2007. Its most important contemporary figure is Rami Hellis, who has reportedly formed an armed network with Ahmed Jundeya, another prominent local figure from Shejaiya, a large neighborhood in the eastern part of Gaza City.

Their forces have operated in areas under Israeli control, and have resisted Hamas attempts to re-establish its authority in the area. Reuters describes the Hellis/Jundeya network as one of the principal armed challenges to Hamas following the 2025 ceasefire.

The al-Majayda clan is based around Khan Younis and it, too, has become involved in the struggle over postwar authority. Members have clashed with Hamas during attempts by Hamas security forces to arrest suspects. Although the clan has criticized Hamas's use of extrajudicial violence, its political position is notably ambiguous. At least one senior al-Majayda figure subsequently expressed support for Hamas's efforts to restore order.

The al-Majayda clan has been linked to the CTSF through local alliances and cooperation, although the clan and the militia are distinct entities.

The Doghmosh clan is somewhat different from the others. It is not primarily an Israeli-backed militia. It is one of Gaza's longstanding armed families and has historically shifted between relationships with Hamas, Fatah, Salafist groups, and independent activity.

Back in October 2025 armed members of the clan fought Hamas forces in Gaza City and it was described as a significant armed rival to Hamas. Currently there does not seem to be a formal Doghmosh militia.

As for the 20-point Trump peace plan for Gaza, there is no evidence that any major anti-Hamas militia has formally adopted the plan as its platform. Some – especially the Popular Forces – have objectives that do overlap with key parts of the plan, particularly supporting a post-Hamas administration after ending Hamas rule. Others – anti-Hamas though they are – seem more intent on pursuing their own more narrow interests.

Iran’s last effective proxy

2026-08-11T07:51:39.379+01:00

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 11 August 2026

With Hamas and Hezbollah substantially weakened, Iran is increasingly relying on the Houthis as its principal remaining proxy capable of exerting sustained military and economic pressure on the US and its regional partners. Currently, as a complement to Iran's campaign in the Strait of Hormuz, the Houthis are attempting to exploit their control of the Bab al-Mandab strait, situated at the foot of the Red Sea and controlling access to the Suez Canal.

Simultaneously with harrying the shipping in the strait, they are striking targets in Saudi Arabia in conjunction with Iran, whose 2023 pact with Saudi has been consigned to the trash.

On February 28, 2026, in response to the US-Israeli attack, Iran launched missiles and armed drones against Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, mainly because they harbored US bases, but also to punish and deter both Saudi and other governments for their close connection to the US.

Iranian strikes were reported to have hit energy facilities in Saudi, including igniting a fire at the Ras Tanura oil refinery. The Prince Sultan Air Base was also targeted by drone attacks, then and later.

On July 16, Reuters, citing multiple regional and Iranian sources, reported that Iran had instructed the Houthis to prepare to close the Bab al-Mandab strait. The directive to do so would be given if the US struck Iran's power grid or energy infrastructure.

Although the order was described as a contingency directive, the Houthis reportedly began positioning missiles and drones near the strait while awaiting any further authorization.

Four days later, on July 20, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree appeared on television to announce that "a maritime embargo against the criminal Saudi enemy" would be imposed immediately.

He described it as an "eye for an eye" measure, in response to what the Houthis called Saudi Arabia's long-running blockade of Yemen, and a recent attack on Sanaa’s International Airport.

The result is a second maritime chokepoint, augmenting Iran’s pressure on international shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. The Houthis are targeting Saudi oil exports and commercial tankers using Saudi ports, thus attempting to close off the principal alternative export route available after disruptions in Hormuz. The operation as a whole is, in effect, a joint effort by Iran and its Yemeni ally to exert maximum pressure on global oil markets.

A few days later, in response, the Saudi-led coalition struck Houthi targets in Yemen.

In short, Iran-Saudi rivalry is being fought out mainly on the Houthi front, the crisis is being sustained by Houthi military action, and the Saudi coalition clearly regards the Houthis as part of Iran’s regional leverage network.

But Saree’s TV address clearly revealed that, from the Houthi’s point of view, two wars are overlapping, and in taking up the fight, the Houthis are killing two birds with one stone. Saree referred to Saudi Arabia’s “blockade” of Yemen, and its strike against the airport at Sanaa, once Yemen’s capital. So in attacking Saudi Arabia the Houthis are not only acting in direct support of Iran, but they are also striking at the ally of their main opponent in Yemen’s long-running civil war – the internationally recognized Yemeni government.

Since 2014 the Houthis, having overthrown the official government, have controlled Sanaa and much of north-western Yemen. That government – now based principally in Aden – continues to be recognized by the UN and receives military and financial backing from Saudi Arabia.

Saudi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) was alarmed at the prospect of Iran gaining a foothold on the Arabian Peninsula, and in 2015, with the civil war at its height, intervened militarily. He formed a coalition whose declared objective was to restore the internationally recognized Yemeni government, and prevent the emergence of an Iranian-aligned regime on his country’s southern border.

Although a UN-brokered truce in 2022 substantially reduced cross-border fighting, it never resolved the underlying political conflict. The Houthis retained control of the capital and most of Yemen's population centers in the northwest, while the recognized government retained international legitimacy but exercised authority over only part of the country.

Accordingly, from the Houthi perspective, Saudi Arabia remains not merely a regional rival, but the principal foreign military supporter of its domestic enemy. Conversely, from Riyadh's perspective, the Houthis are an armed insurgent movement backed by Iran that displaced Yemen's legitimate government.

Most intelligence services and academic experts now reject earlier characterizations of the Houthis as merely "Iranian puppets." They are currently seen more as partners with overlapping interests but independent agendas. Iran provides support because the Houthis advance Tehran's regional interests, while the Houthis, retaining significant autonomy in decision-making, accept support because it enhances their military and political position. Both sides derive substantial benefits.

Particularly since October 7, Iran has reportedly supplied the Houthis with missile and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technology, including training, intelligence and financial support, and diplomatic backing. The Houthis, meanwhile, provide Iran with pressure on Saudi Arabia and on Red Sea shipping, leverage against Israel and a relatively inexpensive means of projecting regional influence.

Two possible developments might cause the mutually beneficial partnership to disintegrate. The first, and perhaps the more plausible, would be a decisive weakening or collapse of the Iranian regime following a renewed US military campaign, should the Trump administration in the future conclude that Tehran remained irredeemably hostile and that diplomatic options had been exhausted. Such an outcome could deprive the Houthis of their principal source of advanced military technology, training, and political backing, forcing them to pursue a more independent course.

A second, less likely possibility would arise if sustained efforts by Hans Grundberg, the UN Special Envoy for Yemen, succeeded in bringing the principal parties to the civil war into meaningful negotiations, securing a durable ceasefire and a comprehensive political settlement. Were the Houthis to become stakeholders in a recognized governing arrangement, their incentives could shift toward economic reconstruction, international legitimacy, and stable regional relations, reducing the strategic value of close alignment with Iran.

For the moment, though, the liaison is firm, and the Houthis have become Iran's only major proxy capable of exercising direct international pressure by threatening world oil supplies.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Are the Houthis Iran's last gaming card?", 11 August 2026:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-905067

Published in Eurasia Review, 14 August 2026:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/14082026-irans-last-effective-proxy-oped/

Israel on Trial

2026-08-06T18:37:40.477+01:00

My review of "Israel on Trial: Examining the History, the Evidence, and the Law"

by Roy K Altman

Published in the Jerusalem Post Weekend Magazine, 7 August 2026

Roy K. Altman, a graduate of Columbia University, served as a federal prosecutor for the US Court of Appeals before being appointed a US District Judge for the Southern District of Florida – at the time the youngest district judge ever so appointed.

In his new book, Israel on Trial, he takes the six accusations most widely levied against Israel and subjects them to what he calls “the legal methodology judges, juries and lawyers have used for centuries.” He sets out the evidence for and against each of the crimes that Israel is charged with, and scrutinizes it forensically, using the time-honored rules of evidence that he applies consistently in his own courtroom.

The six allegations that he subjects to this scrupulous analysis are first that Jews are colonists in the Land of Israel; then that the founding of the State of Israel was illegitimate; that Israel has prevented the establishment of a Palestinian state; that Israel was occupying Gaza before October 7, 2023 and had turned it into an “open-air prison”; that Israel is an apartheid state; and that Israel committed genocide in Gaza.

Using factual, historical, archeological, even the latest genealogical evidence, he demonstrates the shaky, unreliable, often illogical nature of the charges that have become routine among those who reject Israel’s right to exist.

Why is Altman’s book so important, indeed vital? After all, his conclusions, solidly based though they are, will certainly not convince committed anti-Zionists, while pro-Israel advocates will already be familiar with them.

No, it is the ordinary every-day Jew faced with irrational antisemitic hatred – the person in the workplace, shopping center or social setting, the young person in the classroom or campus – that needs, and will surely welcome, Israel on Trial. In these pages Altman provides a convincing fact-based rebuttal to the anti-Israel tropes that are so casually tossed around these days.

There are also vast numbers of largely uncommitted people across the globe who are subject to a constant flood of false narratives about Israel, Zionism and the Jewish people. If only some could be enticed to open the pages of Israel on Trial, they would discover that there is an antidote for the poison they are perpetually fed.

To the charge that Jews are colonists, he begins with the accepted definition of “colonist” – “an outsider with no historical, linguistic, cultural or religious connection to the land he is conquering.” Then he demonstrates that “the Jews were living in (and often governing) the Land of Israel thousands of years before Islam existed, hundreds of years before the Roman emperor Hadrian invented the word Palaestina…and long before Arab Muslims first invaded the land in AD 636.”

As for Israel’s legitimacy, Altman rebuts the assertion that the “biblical promise is Israel’s only claim to legitimacy”. He asserts that the criteria set out in the 1933 Montevideo treaty are universally accepted as international law on the subject of legitimate statehood. A nascent state has to fulfil four requirements: have a permanent population, have a defined territory, be governed by a single effective government, and have the capacity to conduct foreign relations.

Altman points out that when Israel declared independence in May 1948, it met all four criteria.

As to the claim that Israel has prevented the establishment of a Palestinian state, Altman cites the six occasions that Israel (or the international community with Israeli acquiescence), “has offered the Arabs a Palestinian state – and, each time, the Arabs have rejected that offer.”

Each of those attempts, says Altman, was thwarted “by the Palestinians’ own demand for an Arab state that stretches ‘from the river to the sea’.”

To the charge that Israel was occupying Gaza on October 7, 2023 and had turned it into an “open-air prison” or a concentration camp, Altman sets out the irrefutable historic facts, linked to the commonly understood meaning of both “prison” and “concentration camp, which prove the reverse.

His Chapter 5 is concerned with the widely-voiced charge that Israel is an apartheid state. In addition to setting out the irrefutable facts concerning the equal status and rights of the 20% of Israel’s Arab citizens, Altman lays bare a inherent illogicality in the extreme anti-Israel position.

“True,” he writes, “the Palestinians who live in Gaza and in parts of Judea and Samaria enjoy none of these rights in Israel. But that’s because they don’t live in Israel, don’t want to live in Israel, and thus aren’t Israeli citizens at all.”

More than 140 countries around the world, he notes, as well as many of the organizations and individuals asserting the apartheid claim recognize the State of Palestine.

“Israel cannot be practicing apartheid by refusing to afford citizenship rights to the citizens of another country,” writes Altman,”…but that’s exactly what Amnesty International, for instance, is suggesting when, on the one hand, it recognizes the existence of a “State of Palestine,” while on the other, it claims that Israel is an apartheid state for refusing to afford full citizenship rights to the citizens of that Palestinian state.”

And so Altman reaches the assertion repeated ad nauseam – that Israel committed, and continues to commit, genocide against the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza. It is an accusation, as Altman demonstrates, that relies on re-interpreting the meaning of the word “genocide”. It is used by many as a measure of their antipathy to the loss of civilian life during Israel’s fight against Hamas. But the term “genocide” has a very specific meaning.

Altman makes it abundantly clear that he regards the loss of a single civilian life in war as a tragedy. However, “the question in a genocide case isn’t whether innocent civilians have died in Gaza. They unquestionably have—just as they have in every war that’s ever been fought.”

The essence of the crime of genocide is the specific “intent to destroy” the victim group’s existence. To be guilty of genocide, the State of Israel must have intended to wipe out the population of Gaza. Altman demonstrates, with irrefutable facts and figures, that Israel did not have, and never has had, any such intention.

In Israel on Trial Altman provides all who love Israel with sound evidence-based arguments to counter the disinformation that clogs the social media platforms and so often the official news media as well. It is a book entirely in tune with the times, and is highly recommended.

Published in the Jerusalem Post online:
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-904749

The new US-Syria-Iraq connection

2026-08-04T05:45:01.010+01:00

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 4 August 2026

On July 8, on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, US President Donald Trump had a face-to-face meeting with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa.

According to the official Syrian read-out and US reporting, they discussed strengthening US-Syrian relations, Syria’s economic recovery, and foreign investment. Following their meeting Trump announced he was removing Syria from the US list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, a designation Syria had borne since 1979.

Reuters reported that Trump handed Sharaa a personal letter during the meeting. The key passages were: "I promised to remove all barriers stopping you from rebuilding your country, and very soon, you will finally be able to do so," and "We have US companies ready to invest in Syria and help make your country greater and more prosperous than ever before."

Speaking to the media after their meeting, Trump praised Sharaa in unusually strong terms. He’s: “doing an unbelievable job in unifying Syria….Syria was a mess…now it's just come together….He's done a fantastic job." All the indications are that Trump has decided to adopt post-Assad Syria as a working partner in developing a reinvigorated Middle East.

One week later, Trump was entertaining Iraq’s prime minister, Ali al-Zaidi, at the White House.

Once again the meeting was notable for its tone. Trump repeatedly praised Zaidi and spoke of their "tremendous chemistry." He made it clear that he regarded Iraq’s new prime minister also as a partner with whom Washington could build a stronger long-term relationship.

The discussion covered expanding economic relations between the two countries, while both sides endorsed a series of memoranda of understanding (MoU) involving US participation in Iraq's oil and gas sector. Zaidi reiterated his government's intention of bringing all armed groups, including Iran-backed militias, under state control, while confirming that the remaining US forces in Iraq are expected to complete their withdrawal by September 30, 2026.

What was not specifically referred to by either party – and not mentioned either following Trump’s discussion with Sharaa – was the US-Syria-Iraq plan to revive the historic 500-mile pipeline from the oilfields of Kirkuk in northern Iraq to the town of Baniyas, on Syria's Mediterranean coast – a determined effort to reduce Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz.

Tom Barrack, Trump’s ambassador to Turkey and envoy to Syria and Iraq, had been working on the details of the agreement before Zaidi’s visit.

The pipeline was completed in 1952 by Iraq’s Petroleum Company with a capacity of around 300,000 barrels per day. Baghdad shut the pipeline in the 1980s after Syria sided with Iran during the Iran-Iraq war.

The pipeline will almost certainly have to be wholly replaced – a project calculated to last up to three years.

A glance at the map shows that reviving the pipeline would give Iraq a strategic alternative to exporting oil through the Strait of Hormuz. Unlike Gulf exports, shipments through the Kirkuk-Baniyas pipeline would avoid the Persian Gulf altogether. It would spare tankers the need to negotiate the strategic Hormuz chokepoint on both their outbound and return voyages. Oil reaching Syria's Mediterranean coast via the pipeline could be shipped directly to European markets.

Routing Iraqi oil this way could cut a tanker's voyage to European refineries by roughly 3,000 nautical miles and more than a week at sea, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in normal shipping costs while avoiding the war-risk insurance and disruption associated with the Strait of Hormuz.

Although it has clearly been agreed between the parties to keep the resurrection of the historic pipeline low-key, Reuters and other media outlets indicate that the project has advanced well beyond the conceptual stage. It is claimed that the US is officially backing restoration of the 891 km (about 550 mile) long pipeline, and that the US expects American firms to take part in rebuilding the line. Chevron has been widely mentioned as a potential participant, although the company has declined to comment publicly.

Other pipeline projects with outlets on Syria’s Mediterranean coast are also under consideration, and could link major energy producers in the Gulf, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, directly to Syria’s ports. Indeed, with Syria shorn of its sanctions and established as a fully-fledged partner, it has the potential to become a major energy transit hub. It has about 2.5 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, but some geological estimates suggest its undiscovered onshore and offshore petroleum resources could ultimately exceed 20 billion barrels.

In February 2026, Chevron signed a memorandum of understanding with Syria's state-owned petroleum company and Qatar's Power International Holding to develop the country's first offshore oil and gas field. Days later, Saudi and American energy companies formed a consortium to explore four or five oil and gas blocks and rebuild energy infrastructure in north-east Syria.

Finding gas is, of course, only the beginning. Syria would ultimately need to sell it. Trump's decision to remove Syria from the US list of State Sponsors of Terrorism signals that Washington now regards Sharaa's government as a legitimate partner. That political endorsement encourages investors who might otherwise have stayed away, and it makes it much easier to construct pipelines, use Mediterranean export terminals, attract investment and conclude long-term gas sales contracts with foreign buyers.

Were Israel to follow Trump’s lead in considering Syria's potential as a commercial partner, several hazards would need to be overcome. One is the strong influence that Turkey, no friend of Israel, exercises on Sharaa.

Then there is the fact that Russia has retained a significant military and commercial presence in Syria. President Vladimir Putin has preserved his strategic foothold on the eastern Mediterranean, having negotiated continued access to Russia’s naval facility at Tartus and its Khmeimim air base near Latakia. At the same time, according to reliable media reports, a Russian commercial logistics hub is expected to become operational at Tartus very soon, handling Russian cargo and providing a maritime link between the Syrian coast and Russia's Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.

Trump seems determined to enfold both Syria’s Sharaa and Iraq’s al-Zaidi into a close commercial and economic embrace. In Israel, however, both are viewed rather more cautiously. Trust cannot simply be bestowed; it will have to be earned.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online titled "Trump’s Syria-Iraq pipeline plan aims to weaken Iran’s leverage", 4 August 2026:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-904406

Published in Eurasia Review, 13 August 2026

https://www.eurasiareview.com/08082026-the-new-us-syria-iraq-connection-oped/

"Queers for Palestine" and the intersectionality trap

2026-07-29T16:06:54.003+01:00

Published in the Jerusalem Report, and the Jerusalem Post online, 28 July 2026

A tidal wave of antisemitism has swept across the Western world in recent years. One of its more puzzling aspects is the bizarrely incompatible alliances it has fostered.

A striking case is the common sight of LGBTQ+ activists and “Queers for Palestine” marching in solidarity with Palestinian movements such as Hamas or Islamic Jihad. They either do not know, or they choose to ignore, that according to the law and norms of their fellow campaigners homosexuality is a criminal offence, punishable with imprisonment or even death.

A similar pattern appears among some women’s rights activists. They proclaim their solidarity with regimes or movements such as Iran or its proxy Hamas, whose gender policies are starkly anti‑feminist. Iran’s legal system fuses patriarchal culture with rigid Sharia‑based rules, producing discrimination and state‑sanctioned violence against women, including lethal force over dress‑code violations. In this strange alliance, some left‑wing feminist elements in the West are prepared to turn a blind eye to extreme misogyny, just as long as it is embedded in forces opposed to “Western imperialism” and Israel, condemned as a “white, colonial, patriarchal” oppressor.

This unnatural conjunction of progressive, left-wing activists with narrow-minded, homophobic, misogynistic entities is glued together by a doctrine that mesmerized feminist and critical race theorists in the late 1980s, and rapidly captivated large parts of the social sciences world. It is called “intersectionality”.

The term was coined in 1989 by the American legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw. She invented it to explain how Black women’s lives were adversely affected by discrimination not only of race but also of gender, and that the two impacted on each another.

This basic idea – that one form of oppression actually influences another – appealed to sociologists. It quickly became an obsession, mushrooming to encompass the concept that every form of discrimination within a society against oppressed or disenfranchised groups is interlinked.

It did not require much effort to incorporate into these intersecting forms of oppression the old chestnut that – despite all the evidence to the contrary – Israel was an apartheid state dedicated to oppressing Palestinians. As a result, the groups that considered themselves oppressed were led to embrace the Palestinians as fellow victims, and to perceive Israel as part of the oppressive global power structure. In short, intersectionality soon offered anti-Israel organizations a fashionable and acceptable way of wielding the ultimate antisemitic weapon – linking every perceived evil in the world to the Jews or the Jewish state.

From the 2010s, intersectionality became mainstream in progressive NGOs, campus politics, social justice and anti-fascist campaigns. Movements increasingly adopted an “intersectional” language of overlapping systems. In left-wing circles it became both fashionable and a matter of self-preservation to maintain, for example, that equal pay for women is related to Black Lives Matter, or that climate change activism is inseparable from the struggle against colonialism. And since left-wing opinion has decreed that Palestinians are quintessential victims and their villainous oppressors are Israel, dogma dictated that in opposing any form of discrimination you must oppose Israel.

Your opposition must, of course, extend to all those who support Israel – which means the vast majority of diaspora Jewry. And then, by a further extension, to all Israelis. You must deny them a voice, ban them from public life, cut them off from academic interchange, boycott or disrupt their artistic performances. It is on the basis of intersectionality that the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement operates its anti-Israel and anti-Israeli campaigns.

Pride Month events in the US and Europe supply clear examples of this frankly antisemitic thinking. LGBTQ+ organizations regularly accuse Israel – the only state in the Middle East with a liberal approach to sexual issues – of “pinkwashing”, that is of cynically using its advanced LGBTQ+ rights to distract the world’s attention from its alleged human rights violations. In other words, nothing that Israel can do – even demonstrate its open-hearted support for liberal sexual politics – can outweigh the underlying antipathy toward the Jewish state.

As a result Jewish and pro‑Israel LGBTQ+ groups have been harassed or excluded from Pride marches, while organizations which support Palestinian factions with deeply homophobic ideologies are welcomed in the name of solidarity with the “oppressed.”

Groups and movements intent on putting intersectional theory into practice simply fail, or refuse, to perceive antisemitism as a rampant form of oppression. None take into account that for centuries Jews across the world were subject to discrimination and persecution. Nor do they acknowledge that Zionism was the political reaction – a movement aimed at restoring to the Jewish people the right to determine their own future in their ancestral homeland.

It is heartening, however, to note that the intersectionality tide is beginning to turn. Some scholars have started to argue that intersectionality sidelines antisemitism.

Sociologist Karin Stogner writes that intersectionality as usually practiced shows a “tendency to exclude global antisemitism from its understanding of oppression.” She notes that movements guided by this exclusion—she names the Women’s March, Chicago Dyke March, and parts of Black Lives Matter—have “excluded Jewish organizations and individuals from participation and take a vehement anti‑Israel stance.”

In one paper she describes “strange alliances that occur between queer and intersectional feminism on the one hand and global antisemitism on the other.”

Professor Christina Hoff Sommers has written: “Of course, intersectionality theory is a confused muddle. It fights racism and sexism by classifying everyone according to race and sex. It views race and gender privilege as the root of all evil, while ignoring the role played by dogmatic ideologies held by all genders."

Even Kimberlé Crenshaw herself, some twenty years after devising the idea of intersectionality, complained that her concept had been stretched beyond what she intended. She wrote that intersectionality was “originally meant to be a tool used to understand and frame the discrimination faced by black women in the United States,” but that it had been “contorted” to become something that she never intended it to be.

No-one could speak with greater authority. She has asserted that intersectionality as she conceived it has burst its banks and flooded out of control. Are its proponents at last beginning to perceive that the misguided application of its theories to Israel and the Jewish people is in part responsible for the uncontrolled expansion of antisemitism in the West?

Published by the Jerusalem Post online, 28 July 2026:

https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/article-903414

Trump’s nuclear deal and Saudi Vision 2030

2026-07-28T08:37:39.946+01:00

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 28 July 2026

It was on July 22 that a new Saudi civil nuclear agreement was signed between the US and Saudi Arabia. First reports indicated that the agreement assured Saudi Arabia of a 30-year cooperation with the US on civil nuclear development with no reference to the requirements laid down in the past by the US as essential to such a deal – such as joining the Abraham Accords or a ban on enriching uranium domestically.

Within 24 hours US President Donald Trump had posted clarifications on both issues on his Truth Social platform. He endorsed the nuclear agreement – which, incidentally, still requires a 90-day congressional review, and could face opposition – but, he wrote, it “is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords.”

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Saudi Arabia joining the Accords “would be an historic leap forward for peace in the Middle East.”

Since no international inspection process had been built into the deal, there were immediate fears that Saudi Arabia would be able to enrich uranium, leading eventually to a nuclear weapons program.

Trump was intent on quashing that assumption as well.

“The Civil Nuclear Deal,” he wrote, adding in brackets “(there will be no enrichment of material)…pertains only to non-military use such as the ones that Iran and UAE (and others) already have.”

Little attention has been paid to how the new arrangement will impact on the ambitious plan, launched by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) in April 2016, aimed at revitalizing the kingdom – Saudi Vision 2030.

The kingdom of Saudi Arabia is less than a hundred years old. It was only in 1932 that Abdul Aziz ibn Saud emerged from many years of political and military struggle against the Ottoman empire and other local chieftains, and was able to name the area he had conquered “Saudi Arabia”, and proclaim himself its monarch.

No doubt MBS had an eye on the eventual centenary celebrations in 2032 of the monarchy and the kingdom when he launched the Vision 2030 program. If it succeeds, by the centenary year Saudi Arabia will have been transformed from virtual total dependence on oil revenues into a modern, liberalized, thriving society, its prosperity underpinned by flourishing industrial, financial, economic and commercial sectors.

When first announced, Saudi Vision 2030 envisaged, among hundreds of initiatives, privatizing entire sectors of the economy, cutting subsidies, courting investors at home and abroad, streamlining government services, and going public with the national oil company, Saudi Aramco, the world's largest oil producer and most profitable company.

This last step was achieved in 2019, when Aramco’s initial public offering (IPO) raised $29.4 billion, the largest in history, Yet it was only 1.5% of the company that was sold to the public; the Saudi state and its sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, still own 98.5% of Aramco.

A key objective of the program is to achieve economic diversification not by diminishing oil production, but by reducing the kingdom’s dependency on oil. Ten years after the launch of Vision 2030, in April 2026, the government published a new progress report. It reveals a rapid expansion and diversification of non-oil economic activity, employment, investment and government revenue sources.

The report states that by the end of 2025, non-oil GDP was contributing 55% to the economy – the first time that non-oil sectors have made up a clear majority of the kingdom’s real economic output.

To reduce the kingdom’s dependence on oil, Saudi Arabia is also investing heavily in renewable energy projects. The kingdom has become the fastest-growing renewables market outside China.

Vision 2030 includes nearly 50 large-scale construction and development projects aimed at transforming the nation's infrastructure. A cornerstone of the program is Neom, a $500 billion futuristic city sited in the northwest of Saudi Arabia.

Envisioned as a hub for innovation and sustainability, it aims to incorporate smart city technologies and renewable energy sources. Recent reports indicate that Neom is facing significant financial challenges, with rising costs and delays leading to concerns about the project's feasibility. This is one obvious area where Israeli hi-tech know-how, under an Abraham Accords umbrella, could help the development.

The Red Sea Project is an initiative focused on developing a luxury tourist destination along Saudi Arabia's west coast. With environmental conservation built into the concept, it features resorts across an archipelago of pristine islands and inland sites. When all phases are completed it will comprise 50 resorts offering 10,000 hotel rooms in addition to more than 1,000 residential properties. Saudi Arabia hosts millions of Muslims each year on their Hajj pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, but inside an Abraham Accords partnership Israeli expertise in global, as opposed to Islamic, tourism could be of invaluable assistance in realizing the project.

The Red Sea Project is a 28,000-square-kilometer tourism masterplan on the northern Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia, developed in collaboration with the Red Sea Development Company under Saudi Vision 2030. Covering more than 90 islands, two coastal village hubs, and inland development across a planned 10,000 hotel keys and residential units, the masterplan is designed to generate 100% of its required power on-site through photovoltaic panels and solar roads.

Positioned near Riyadh, Qiddiya is envisioned as a vast entertainment city, encompassing theme parks, sports facilities, and cultural venues. It aims to become a major tourist destination, contributing to the diversification of the economy. Construction of a variety of parks, performing arts centers. sports stadiums and other projects is forging ahead, with several attractions planned to open well before 2030.

Recently announced, the Mukaab is set to be the largest building in the world, featuring a unique cube-shaped design. It is part of the New Murabba development in Riyadh and aims to offer a mix of residential, commercial, and entertainment spaces. Construction has commenced, with the first phase expected to be completed by 2030.

Ever since the idea was mooted of Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords, their prequisite has been a clear path to Palestinian sovereignty. They may decide that Phase 3 of Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza provides that assurance.

Now a multi-billion dollar US-partnered investment program in civil nuclear development is to be added to the immensely challenging program already under way. It presages a partnership way into the future, allowing US companies to help Saudi Arabia not only develop a civilian nuclear power program, but also realize MBS’s ambitious Vision 2030 project.

Whoever leads the US in 2032 will certainly merit a seat of honor at Saudi Arabia’s centenary celebrations.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Saudi Arabia-US nuke deal helps MBS realize Saudi Vision 2030", 28 July 2026
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-903756

Published in Eurasia Review, 31 July 2026:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/31072026-trumps-nuclear-deal-and-saudi-vision-2030-oped/

Trump, Erdogan and the F-35 enigma

2026-07-21T16:37:27.701+01:00

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 21 July 2026

Designed as a multirole combat aircraft, the F-35 combines low-observable (stealth) shaping with advanced sensors, data fusion, and networked communications, enabling it to conduct air-to-air combat, precision strike missions, intelligence gathering, and electronic warfare in contested environments.

On July 7, on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, US President Donald Trump met the media together with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Trump used the occasion to announce that the US would be lifting the sanctions that had been imposed on Turkey in December 2020 under the CAATS (Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions) Act.

Turkey had been sanctioned because Erdogan, in defiance of Washington’s express warnings, had gone ahead and purchased the Russian S‑400, a long-range surface‑to‑air missile system specifically designed as a defense against aircraft such as the F-35, the advanced multirole stealth fighter that has become the cornerstone of America’s tactical air power.

Trump was then asked whether Turkey would be allowed to buy the F-35.
"Turkey has been in many ways much more loyal than other countries that we thought would be loyal,” he replied “…so it is something we definitely would consider."

That was an astonishing response, given that Turkey is still deploying the S-400 system, specifically designed as a defense system against aircraft such as the F-35.

It was Erdogan’s decision to acquire the S-400 that got him ejected from the F-35 program back in 2017. As soon as he announced his intention to do so, Washington made it clear that any attempt to fly US F-35s and simultaneously operate the Russian S-400 defense system was an absolute non-starter. It would effectively turn the S‑400 into a live intelligence‑collection platform on the F‑35’s stealth and mission‑system profile.

The S-400 mobile air defense system is designed to detect, track, and engage aircraft, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and certain other aerial targets using a combination of phased-array radars, command vehicles, and multiple types of interceptor missiles operating at different ranges and altitudes.

What was obvious then remains obvious today. If F-35s routinely flew within range of an operational S-400, the Russian-designed radars could collect enormous quantities of data about the aircraft's radar signature, flight profiles, electronic emissions and tactics. Highly classified information about the F-35's stealth characteristics could be exposed.

That concern explains why Congress enacted legislation barring the transfer of F-35s to Turkey while it retains the Russian S-400 air defense system.

It has not prevented continued low-level negotiations between Turkey and the US about the possibility of Turkey rejoining the F-35 program. On December 10, 2025, US Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack wrote on social media that the US was in ongoing discussions with Turkey “regarding their desire to rejoin the F-35 program and their possession of the Russian-made S-400 air defense system. As laid out in US law, Türkiye must no longer operate nor possess the S-400 system to return to the F-35 program."

By April 2026 Barrack’s stance had hardened. Speaking at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum he expressed confidence that the long-running dispute over Turkey's Russian-made S-400 air-defense system was nearing resolution. "I think you're going to see the S-400 [problem] solved soon," he said, adding: "From my boss's point of view, acceptance into an F-35 program is fine."

There may be political and practical reasons for Trump’s change of heart.

Deteriorating relations with Iran has made Turkey's strategic value to Washington considerably greater. Turkey controls NATO's southeastern flank and borders Iran, Iraq and Syria. Trump may judge that rebuilding the alliance with Ankara is now a priority.

Moreover a confidential understanding may have been reached over the S-400. Although nothing has been announced publicly, media reports suggest that there have been discussions about deactivating the system. Reuters notes that transferring the system to a third country is another proposal under discussion.

Congress has not changed the statutory restrictions of the sale of the F-35, meaning that any proposal to do so could face a significant legal and political battle. Trump may be prepared to challenge Congress. But all he may be signaling is intent rather than a settled policy. All he said was that he will lift sanctions and "consider" F-35 sales.

If Erdogan is ultimately to win the F-35 struggle, then either Turkey has to remove, export or permanently deactivate the S-400; or Congress has to agree to relax or amend the legal restrictions despite the continued presence of the S-400.

Currently there is no evidence that the first has occurred, while there is substantial evidence of bipartisan resistance in Congress to the second. That is why, despite Trump's dramatic shift in tone, the path to restoring Turkey's F-35 status remains uncertain.

Speaking at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum on April 17, Barrack threw in a casual remark that raised a few eyebrows at the time, but has not been followed up.

"Greece has S-300s and F-35s," he said.

Greece, like Turkey, is a member of NATO. Could it possibly be deploying the advanced US fighter and the Russian anti-missile defense system at the same time – the very situation that Washington totally vetoed in the case of Turkey?

An examination of the facts reveals a complicated but innocuous situation that has little in common with Turkey’s.

Barrack was entirely accurate when he spoke of the S-300, an older version with significantly more limited capabilities than the S-400. Moreover the S-300 system operated by Greece was not a Greek purchase.

In 1997 Glafcos Clerides's government in Cyprus ordered two S-300 PMU-1 batteries from Russia. Turkey threatened military action if the missiles were deployed in Cyprus. After a major diplomatic crisis involving the US, Britain and NATO, Cyprus agreed not to install them. In 1998-99 the missiles were transferred to Greece.

So Greece inherited the S-300, designed during the late Soviet period and delivered more than 25 years ago.

US officials have consistently argued that Turkey's case is fundamentally different. Despite repeated US warnings, Turkey deliberately negotiated a major strategic defense contract with Russia in 2017, and it bought the far newer S-400 Triumf, one of Russia's most advanced strategic air-defense systems..

As for the F-35s, in January 2024 the US State Department approved the sale of 40 Lightning II aircraft to Greece.

On July 8, following the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, Greece’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, told Greek journalists: "Greek pilots will begin training on the Greek F-35s in 2027.”

Greece’s situation may indeed be different from Turkey’s, but a convincing case could be made for a precedent having been set.

Could this be the chink that leads to opening the door for Turkey’s acquisition of the F-35?

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online, 22 July 2026:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-902969

Published in Eurasia Review, 24 July 2026:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/24072026-trump-erdogan-and-the-f-35-enigma-oped/

Iran’s internal power struggle

2026-07-14T05:29:27.409+01:00

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 14 July 2026

Ever since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran has been an autocratic theocracy, ruled with an iron fist by the supreme leader – first Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini until his death in 1989, and then Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, until he was killed on February 28, 2026 in an airstrike.

Today’s Iran is no longer what it has been. What it has become is the subject of controversial interpretations.

Some believe that Iran is no longer a republic of any kind but has morphed into a dictatorial, mafia-style oligarchy in military uniform. The IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), they maintain, exercises total control over political, economic and strategic decisions, whilst maintaining a theocratic veneer for the purposes of internal and international legitimacy.

They believe the new supreme leader, Motjaba Khamenei, is a puppet of the IRGC, selected under direct military pressure which bypassed the constitutional process. The new Khamenei certainly lacks religious credentials and public legitimacy, and has yet to demonstrate any independent authority.

Real power, they say, resides in three IRGC hardliners: IRGC Commander‑in‑Chief Ahmad Vahidi; Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr; and senior military adviser to Khamenei Mohsen Rezaei. All three rejected the renewed negotiations with the US and want to continue the war.

They are only too aware that Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s president since July 2024, wants a ceasefire, and they act systematically to thwart him. The IRGC has blocked his ministerial appointments and countered his signals of de-escalation.

On July 6 some source of power within the regime authorized Iranian forces to attack three commercial vessels near the Strait of Hormuz, well aware that this would prompt a US reaction. In response US Central Command struck more than 80 Iranian military targets.

This supports those who maintain that Iran is governed today by an IRGC which functions simultaneously as an armed force, an economic empire, an intelligence service, a political party and the effective government.

Yet, while many expert commentators do believe that the IRGC has reached a level of power never previously achieved, others are convinced that the internal struggle for dominance is not over and that the IRGC still has to consolidate the level of control it has acquired. They hold that power in Iran today is heavily contested between the IRGC and a more pragmatic political‑diplomatic camp, while the newly elected supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, sits above them as an ambivalent, vulnerable arbiter whose authority is real in law, but fragile in practice.

On the evening of June 30, Iran’s state news TV channel was broadcasting a pre-recorded interview with Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator in the ongoing talks with the US over sanctions relief, nuclear constraints and regional de‑escalation.

Having confirmed that there are “behind‑the‑scenes negotiations” with Washington leading to a possible deal on limiting Iran’s nuclear activity, Ghalibaf was in the middle of a sentence when the screen went blank. After a second or two, an old speech by Ali Khamenei, the former supreme leader, was on the air.

Iranian hardliners had succeeded in cutting off a television interview with the country’s chief peace negotiator, as he was defending the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

In reporting the incident, the UK’s Daily Telegraph said that the censored sections included Ghalibaf’s response to reports that international inspectors would be allowed to visit Iran’s nuclear sites, his account of how frozen Iranian assets would be released, and details of the agreement’s proposed $300bn fund for post-war reconstruction.

Most importantly, Ghalibaf was about to discuss the new supreme leader’s equivocal message about the deal with the US, in which he had remarked that “in principle I had a different opinion” but had nonetheless authorized the agreement. Hardliners had seized upon the remark as proof that the supreme leader was basically opposed to the negotiations that his own government was pursuing, even though he had given his approval to do so.

The television blackout prompted Parliament’s media center to issue a rare public protest, accusing state TV of violating normal protocol. This led to a public debate about who controls the airwaves.

Vahid Jalili, deputy chief at Iran’s state broadcaster, is the brother of Saeed Jalili, a former negotiator aligned with the Paydari Front, Iran’s most uncompromising conservative bloc, which opposes talks with the country that killed the former supreme leader. For the Paydari Front and its allies, resistance to the US is the ideological core of the revolution.

The Ghalibaf TV incident was not the first of its kind. Just ten days previously, on the evening of June 20, Mahmoud Nabavian, a cleric and former member of Iran’s negotiating team, had gone on the air to allege that in agreeing to the US-Iran MoU, the Iranian negotiating team had gone way beyond their brief, and that the terms they had agreed to did not reflect the conditions that the supreme leader had previously set.

In a television interview, he began reading out what he claimed was classified correspondence from the supreme leader. He claimed Khamenei had written to the negotiating team saying: “What was agreed upon in the Pakistan talks is completely different from what was supposed to happen, and was a condition for the legitimacy of the talks, and the talks must be stopped.”

The TV broadcast was cut off abruptly, and soon afterwards the public relations office of the news network announced that it "accepts the resignation of the relevant director general of the network" and would charge him with "negligence in professional management."

Commentators said Nabavian could not have gained access to the supreme leader’s letters without the complicity of a hardline source.

So what is the true situation within Iran? Evidence from reports in Iranian and international media points to a multi‑layered contest for supremacy being waged within the upper echelons of Iran’s governance.

Many believe that Iran is currently operating with four overlapping centers of authority: the supreme leader, the IRGC, the president, and senior IRGC-aligned political figures – and that each is vying for supreme power. All, however, are probably united behind Khamenei's pledge to avenge his father's death; the ideology that has driven the revolution since 1979 lives on.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Hardliners in Tehran are running the show while the Iran's supreme leader watches", 15 July 2026: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-902329

Is the Gaza peace plan dead?

2026-07-07T05:26:45.131+01:00

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 7 July 2026

US President Donald Trump’s 20‑point plan for Gaza, announced on September 29, 2025, linked a one‑off hostage/prisoner exchange to a transition period in which Gaza would be demilitarized and placed under tightly managed international oversight.

The new governance features a technocratic National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) – a Palestinian body running services and reconstruction. It would operate under the strategic control of a Trump‑chaired “Board of Peace” and an international security presence.

Hamas is to be removed from governing authority and stripped of its military capacity. In its place vetted local forces and international troops would enforce a terror‑free, demilitarized Gaza. Meanwhile massive, externally directed reconstruction and investment programs would get under way.

In due course the Palestinian Authority would inherit Gaza from this interim committee, but only if the PA completes a prescribed reform program on security, corruption, and governance. At that point a unified Palestinian administration over Gaza and the West Bank, backed by elections, is envisaged.

Beyond that, the plan holds out the prospect of US‑backed negotiations toward a Palestinian state, but only once the demilitarization process is in progress, and the reformed PA proves it can govern Gaza within this heavily circumscribed framework.

The plan was formally adopted by the UN Security Council on November 17, 2025 in Resolution 2803. Eight Arab and Islamic states had already issued a joint statement welcoming Trump’s effort and confirming that they were ready to work with the US on implementing it: Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the UAE. Even Hamas had agreed to some parts of the proposal, including hostage release and transferring authority, while maintaining that other elements – such as its own disarmament – required further negotiation.

The first phase of the plan – ceasefire plus hostage and prisoner exchange – was achieved and ended large‑scale Israeli–Hamas hostilities. For phase two the UN resolution authorized a temporary International Stabilization Force (ISF) to help demilitarize Gaza and train Palestinian police, with US coordination and contributions from Arab and other states.

As of mid‑2026, Indonesia, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Kosovo and Albania had pledged troops, while Egypt and Jordan have agreed to train Palestinian police. However no ISF units have actually deployed inside Gaza, while the $100 million earmarked by the UAE for police training remains frozen.

Meanwhile the military geography on the ground has been changing. Since the ceasefire the IDF has steadily reduced the area controlled by Hamas from 47% of the Strip to 40% or even less. In May 2026 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he intended to expand Israel’s control to 70% of Gazan territory. However territory and population are not in balance. No more than 15% of Gaza’s population remains in Israeli-controlled areas; at least 85%, and perhaps more, are living in wretched conditions in the coastal zones and urban enclaves held by Hamas. Reports speak of overcrowding, problems with sanitation and access to services, and a severe lack of water.

Gaza’s traditional water sources have been badly degraded by the war, leaving much of the population reliant on minimal supplies, some trucked in daily. Trump’s 20‑point plan and its Board of Peace envisage substantial investment in repairing Gaza’s water infrastructure, but in reality these water‑sector reconstruction measures remain largely at the planning and pledge stage.

More generally, despite Trump's announcement that billions has been pledged through the Board of Peace, the Financial Times reported on May 27 that no donor money has actually reached the World Bank, and that informed sources said “not one US dollar” had yet been spent on Gaza reconstruction through the Board's funding mechanisms.

Turkish and Egyptian construction giants, US and European firms, and Gulf‑based companies are preparing bids to benefit from the envisaged multi‑billion‑dollar rebuild. Most projects are at planning or competition stage, except for one large‑scale build actually under way.

A Gaza‑based contractor, Masoud & Ali Contracting Co (MAC), is constructing an Emirati‑funded housing compound for tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians in an Israeli‑controlled part of southern Gaza. In addition a few businesses and contractors have started some limited reconstruction.

In mid-2026 Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan can best be described as wilting. While still formally in play, phase two seems to have stalled. The ceasefire is repeatedly violated, Hamas demilitarization and therefore Israeli withdrawal have not occurred, and reconstruction in accordance with the plan remains minimal.

This is not precisely the picture presented on March 24 by Nickolay Mladenov, the UN High Representative for Gaza and director‑general of the US‑backed Board of Peace, in his first appearance before the UN Security Council. He was present to brief members on progress in implementing the Gaza peace plan endorsed the previous year in Security Council Resolution 2803.

Mladenov informed the council that a plan, developed with and guaranteed by the US, Egypt, Turkey and Qatar, “is now in place for the decommissioning and reintegration of armed groups in Gaza.” He described the principle at the heart of the framework as: “one authority, one law, one weapon.”

This formula, he stressed, applied without exception to all armed active militias in the Strip, explicitly including Hamas. The objective was the complete decommissioning of weapons in Gaza and their transfer to the control of the technocratic Palestinian authority.

Mladenov said that the first priority, after consolidating a total ceasefire and emergency humanitarian measures, would be to identify and remove heavy weapons systems and military‑grade infrastructure, including tunnels. Subsequent stages would expand disarmament in parallel with staged Israeli withdrawals. The process would be supervised by Palestinian security forces answerable to the National Committee.

Crucially, Mladenov linked compliance with disarmament to the start of large‑scale reconstruction, arguing that collecting the most dangerous weapons was a precondition for economic recovery.

Meanwhile, starting on June 30 the Board of Peace held a two‑day “reset” meeting at a Cyprus resort,
bringing together Board officials, the NCAG, and allied advisers to review stalled plans for post‑war governance, reconstruction, and a transition away from Hamas rule. Participants later called the talks “highly productive”.

So the Gaza peace plan is not dead; it is languishing. It could surely be nursed back to health.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem post online, 7 July 2026:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-901467

Lebanon – fantasy and reality

2026-06-30T05:07:06.690+01:00

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 30 June 2026

The three-way US-Israel-Lebanon deal, agreed and signed on June 26, brings clarity to what has been the somewhat obscure situation produced by the US–Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), agreed on June 17.

It has certainly seemed that, when it comes to Lebanon, US President Donald Trump and Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu were pulling in somewhat different directions.

The published text of the MoU states that the US, Iran “and their respective allies involved in the current conflict” declare an “immediate and lasting cessation of military actions across all fronts, including Lebanon.” Opening a 60‑day window for negotiating a fuller agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, the MoU declares a ceasefire, implicitly including Israel and Hezbollah in the truce.

But neither Israel nor Hezbollah had been involved in negotiating the agreement, which embodies the fantasy that the US and Iran completely control their “respective allies”. They do not, and for the US to have assumed it could take Israel for granted was presumptuous. Although Israel could scarcely be considered bound by its terms, it has chosen to abide by the MoU, though not abdicating the right to defend itself against any breach of the ceasefire by Hezbollah.

For its part, Iran has been unable to restrain Hezbollah, which has ignored the MoU and mounted a whole series of armed assaults on the IDF. There have been at least two major, lethal Hezbollah attacks since the MoU was signed, with five Israeli soldiers killed (four in a tank strike on June 18, and one in a drone strike on June 20), plus several additional non‑fatal attacks. For example, a Hezbollah explosive‑drone attack in southern Lebanon on Saturday June 20 wounded 13 Israeli soldiers.

Despite earlier calls from the White House for Israel to observe the ceasefire, basic justice for the soldiers who lost their lives demanded a response. Israel characterizes these retaliatory actions as self‑defense against clear Hezbollah violations, essential to deterring further attacks. On June 18, performing something of a volte-face compared with the recent past, Trump publicly warned Tehran that it is responsible for reining in Hezbollah, and must ensure the group fully respects the truce.

Iran retaliated on June 20, declaring that Israel was breaching the agreement by attacking Hezbollah, and itself promptly proceeded to violate the MoU by closing the Strait of Hormuz.

The Lebanon situation is full of anomalies. In demanding that Israel cease its military activity in Lebanon, the US, the UN and Western nations, providing no background, declare they are protecting the country and its people from the effects of air strikes. But Hezbollah’s very raison d’être is to attack Israel in pursuit of its declared aim, and that of its Iranian sponsor, to annihilate the state and its people. This basic truth is too often ignored or discounted by Western politicians.

The reality is more nuanced, for what is often ignored is that the Lebanese government has taken matters into its own hands and for many months has been in a deal of its own with Israel, predicated on containing and eventually disarming Hezbollah. The latest round of talks was held in Washington on June 23-26. And the historic three-way agreement of June 27 is the result.

Joseph Aoun was elected Lebanon’s president on January 8, 2025. His top priority was to restore national sovereignty – and that meant reining in the overmighty Hezbollah organization that had become “a state within a state”, and in particular disarming it.

In August 2025 Aoun and his cabinet instructed the army to develop a plan to bring all weapons in the country under the control of state security forces, thereby ending Hezbollah’s autonomy.

One month later Lebanon’s army chief, Rodolphe Haykal, presented the cabinet with a multi‑phase plan to achieve just that. The first phase aimed at disarming all Hezbollah personnel south of the Litani river.

The cabinet authorized the army to put the plan into operation. But it soon became clear that government forces lacked the military capacity to achieve the desired result. Despite some success in dislodging Hezbollah from a few areas of southern Lebanon, it became clear that the plan was not viable. The state on its own could not bring Hezbollah to heel. It needed help if it was to regain national sovereignty.

So from March 2026 Aoun began pushing the idea of face‑to‑face ceasefire talks with Israel, as part of a broader strategy that would ultimately bring Hezbollah’s weapons, and therefore Hezbollah itself, under state control.

The first 2026 Israel–Lebanon ceasefire deal was agreed on April 16. It was extended by 45 days on May 15, following US-mediated talks in Washington, and then renewed and expanded again on June 3. Under this arrangement, a conditional ceasefire was agreed, contingent on a complete halt to Hezbollah’s military strikes against Israel, the evacuation of Hezbollah forces from the South Litani sector, and the creation of “pilot zones” in which the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) would exercise exclusive control to the exclusion of non‑state actors.

By moving into key areas in southern Lebanon and clearing them of Hezbollah, Israel has laid the groundwork for implementing this agreement. Under the new and historic deal, Israel has agreed to withdraw from two areas that will be taken over by the Lebanese army as pilot zones. Now Israel and Lebanon are in effect acting hand-in-hand to degrade Hezbollah, and restore national sovereignty to the Lebanese state itself. The US has agreed to improve the capabilities of the LAF and support its anti-Hezbollah operations.

Aoun has to tread very carefully in implementing this policy. Hezbollah commands considerable support among Lebanon’s Shi’ite community – roughly a third of the population – even if recent reports indicate a degree of disillusionment setting in. Memories of the 1975-1990 civil war are still fresh, and Aoun is determined to avoid reigniting it.

He is also well aware that tens of thousands of the residents of northern Israel’s border are still displaced, and that Israel’s policy is to remove Hezbollah’s offensive capability – by military action if necessary – before a full return is possible.

The Lebanese government is as anxious as Israel to see that day.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 30 June 2026, and in the Jerusalem Post online tiled: "The new US-Israel-Lebanon deal reshapes the fight against Hezbollah," 1 July 2026:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-900802

Erdogan – an uncomfortable fact of life

2026-06-22T18:41:42.358+01:00

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 23June 2026

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is preparing to host the 2026 NATO summit in Ankara on July 7 – a high‑visibility platform, if ever there was one.

The occasion will emphasize how central Turkey has become in Western planning, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Turkey faces Russia across the Black Sea. In the light of NATO’s new ten-year Russia-focused strategy, adopted in 2022, Turkey's geography and capabilities have assumed key significance.

In elevating Erdogan to the chair of this NATO summit, however, Western leaders have had to turn a blind eye to a number of uncomfortable facts. For example their host – a key frontline member of NATO which is totally opposed to Russia’s war in Ukraine – is helping to fund that very war by purchasing Russian gas in enormous quantities. Russia is Turkey’s largest gas supplier, providing more than half of Turkey’s pipeline imports.

Nor is Erdogan in any way moderating his position. Turkey had already renewed two gas supply contracts with Russia in December, but in the last few weeks it has actually enhanced them. The expansion agreement with Gazprom, Russia’s energy corporation, was announced on May 31 at the Baku Energy Forum by Turkey’s energy minister, Alparslan Bayraktar.

At a time when Moscow has lost most of its European customers and is waging war on Europe’s doorstep, NATO’s leaders will once again have to look the other way as Erdogan engages with their principal adversary.

In fact, they have been indulging Erdogan’s erratic behavior for years. For example, they have long turned a blind eye to Erdogan’s disdain for democratic norms.

Erdogan has been leading Turkey since 2003, first as prime minister and latterly as president. Over those 23 years he has constructed a highly autocratic system within the country.

His key method, honed by long use, is to mount prosecutions against political opponents, often charging them under critical speech legislation. He has not only increased the use of existing speech crimes, but has introduced new categories, notably “insulting the president” and “disinformation”. These steps were justified as essential when the nation’s security was threatened. Turkey has endured a succession of such crises under Erdogan, some genuine, some exaggerated, some manufactured.

Between 2014 and 2020 tens of thousands of investigations and over 35,000 prosecutions were mounted under the critical speech provision. Nearly 13,000 people were sentenced, including children. Comparable, detailed official statistics for the period after 2020 are difficult to obtain. Researchers rely on monitoring undertaken by journalists’ unions and human rights groups.

Between late 2022 and late 2024 the government introduced a new offence of “disinformation.” It led to some 4,100 investigations involving 4,590 people, including at least 56 journalists. At the end of 2025 more than 20 journalists were still in prison.

The CHP is Turkey’s main center‑left, secular political party. It led the decisive 2019 victories in the Istanbul and Ankara mayoral races, marking an unprecedented electoral setback for Erdogan. Under the leadership of Ozgur Ozel, the CHP frames itself as a defender of social justice against Erdogan’s dictatorial presidency.

In May 2026, an Ankara appeal court annulled the 2023 CHP congress at which Ozel was elected leader, effectively ousting him and reinstating the previous leadership. This ruling is widely seen as an attempt to neutralize Turkey’s largest opposition party. Ankara’s mayor Mansur Yavas said the decision was aimed at “breaking” the CHP and rendering it ineffective.

Ekrem Imamoglu, the CHP mayor of Istanbul and widely seen as Erdogan’s most formidable rival, was arrested in March 2025 on corruption and terror‑related accusations just days before he was expected to be nominated as a presidential candidate.

Authorities accused him of leading a “criminal organization”, committing fraud and extortion, and assisting the PKK, the armed Kurdish militant organization that Erdogan’s government has long designated a terrorist group. In November 2025, prosecutors filed a nearly 4,000‑page indictment charging Imamoglu with 142 offences, including running a criminal enterprise, bribery, misappropriation of public funds, and money laundering. The combined potential sentence is calculated at up to 2,430 years in prison.

With the main opposition leader facing legal disqualification and the most popular rival detained under the threat of a multi‑millennium sentence, the field of credible challengers to Erdogan is being drastically narrowed. This contributes to what some now describe as a transition from “competitive authoritarianism” to outright autocracy, in which elections remain but the regime systematically removes viable opponents before they can contend for power.

Turkey’s economic deterioration is a crucial backdrop to understanding why Erdogan finds external crises politically useful.

For years Erdogan pressured Turkey’s central bank to maintain very low interest rates arguing, contrary to orthodox economics, that high rates cause inflation. By 2023 inflation was around 40%, the lira had lost over 80% of its value in five years, and foreign reserves were critically low. By 2025 Turkey had technically entered recession, with GDP contracting 0.2% for two consecutive quarters, household consumption falling and annual inflation near 49 percent. This combination of recession and high inflation has severely eroded living standards and public support, and fueled public protests.

Erdogan systematically downplays domestic economic problems as global phenomena, often deflecting blame on to foreign conspiracies.

Autocrats do not relinquish power easily. Under Turkey’s 2017 constitutional changes – actually engineered by Erdogan – his period in office should end in 2028. The constitution created an executive presidency with a two‑term limit of five years each. Erdogan was elected under this system in 2018 and again in 2023.

The constitution allows a president to run again if early elections are called by parliament during the second term. Some opposition figures fear he could engineer just such a snap poll to reset the clock. He would need 360 MPs out of 600 to call a referendum, or 400 for direct adoption in parliament.

His current bloc falls short of both. Nevertheless his main nationalist ally, Devlet Bahceli, has recently been calling for a constitutional amendment to let Erdogan stand again in 2028. It is clear that his own camp is already preparing arguments to keep him in play.

Erdogan is not likely to go quietly.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and in the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Erdogan's grip on Turkey deepens as NATO gathers in Ankara," 23 June 2026:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-900103

Published in Eurasia Review, 29 June 2026:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/26062026-erdogan-an-uncomfortable-fact-of-life-oped/

Abraham Accords partner in trouble

2026-06-16T05:12:23.179+01:00

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 16 June 2026

When Sudan signed up in 2021 to the Abraham Accords, they had been presented to the world as the foundation stone of a new architecture for the Middle East, bringing the prospect of peace, cooperation and stability to the region. That vision is being tested in Sudan, where General Abdel Fattah al‑Burhan, the man who authorized Sudan’s Abraham Accords agreement with Israel, now presides over a country shattered by civil war. It is one of the deadliest and most destructive conflicts globally, and has created the world’s largest and most devastating displacement and humanitarian crisis. There is no end in sight, and it is getting worse.

Having embraced Burhan as a normalization partner, Israel and the other Abraham Accords states have at least a moral obligation to regard Sudan’s agony as a problem in which they have an interest. A member of the pact is in serious trouble. Joint action might help.

For three years the Sudan civil war has been inflicting intolerable suffering on the nation, resulting in “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis” according to the UN. Rigorous estimates suggest that tens of thousands, and possibly well over a hundred thousand, people have already died in Sudan’s war, putting it among the deadliest conflicts of our time.

The nation’s basic infrastructure – water, electricity, transport, health care – has more or less collapsed. Over 11 million people are internally displaced, and roughly 4 million have fled to neighboring countries, including South Sudan, where refugee camps also face severe food and water shortages. Outbreaks of malaria, respiratory illnesses and diarrheal diseases, linked to very poor sanitation and hygiene, are reported rampant in displaced-population areas.

How has this desperate situation come about?

It all began with Sudan’s popular revolution in April 2019 – described at the time as Sudan’s “Arab Spring moment” – and the collapse of the 30-year-long regime of the authoritarian Omar al-Bashir. In the transitional democratic government that followed, Burhan, head of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), became head of the ruling Sovereignty Council. Its members jointly pledged to move the country toward democracy, and to parliamentary elections in 2023.

After some two years the administration was clearly making no progress toward any form of democracy. It was, moreover, clearly failing to deal with the country’s severe economic problems. On October 22, 2021 national frustration erupted in a mass protest in the capital, Khartoum, in support of civilian rule.

Burhan, together with his deputy, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (often referred to as Hemedeti), orchestrated a military coup and took over control of the country.

However it was not long before the two fell out. Dagalo headed the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Burhan considered such a strong force outside the army a source of instability, and announced plans to merge the RSF with the nation’s formal armed services. This was enough for the two former colleagues to take up arms against each other.

On April 15, 2023 the RSF launched coordinated attacks on key SAF sites in Khartoum, claiming early control of major airports. By early 2025 the SAF had pushed the RSF out of Khartoum and most of Omdurman, giving Burhan control of the greater part of Sudan, including the capital region. In February 2025, Burhan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council announced the formation of a new transitional government. In May, Kamil Idris, a civilian, was appointed prime minister. This administration is accepted by the UN, the African Union, Egypt and a number of other states as the legitimate government of Sudan.

In April Dagalo, still in control of significant parts of western and southwestern Sudan, established a rival “Government of Peace and Unity” to administer the territories under their control. This body lacks international recognition.

Meanwhile the civil conflict continues to inflict unprecedented misery on the people.

International humanitarian agencies, reporting in mid-April 2026, put the number of people in need of assistance at roughly 34 million, with about 26 million facing acute food insecurity, over 20 million requiring health assistance, and around 14 million displaced.

In a report published in March 2026 by Doctors Without Frontiers, sexual violence was found to be “part of everyday life” in large areas of Sudan. Researchers documented more than 3,396 cases of sexual violence in 2024 and 2025. Women or girls reported being assaulted by armed individuals. In South Darfur 41 children under the age of five were assaulted.

A report published by the Mercy Corps on May 4 traces how disruption in the Strait of Hormuz is affecting Sudan. The country is already inside the planting periods that will shape harvests through late 2026 and into 2027. If farmers have to reduce fertilizer use, switch crops or plant less land, those losses cannot be reversed by a later political settlement. The result will be even greater food insecurity.

After more than 1000 days of civil war the two sides are entrenched. The SAF appears to have the upper hand in central Sudan, but the RSF remains resilient in its western strongholds. There is no effort to achieve a ceasefire. It seems like a fight to the death by the warlords, who apparently remain indifferent to the horrendous impact of their conflict on the people they both claim to represent.

Efforts have been made by some states to intervene. The Jeddah process (a US‑ and Saudi‑led mediation platform to broker ceasefire and humanitarian arrangements) produced several short‑lived agreements but failed to stop the war. The “Quad” of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and US failed to secure even a temporary ceasefire. Could the Abraham Accords nations, in a collaborative partnership, exercise a stronger influence and achieve a positive outcome?

Israel has maintained contacts with both Burhan and Dagalo; the UAE is known to have direct channels to Dagalo. In principle, a joint push for de‑escalation by Israel, the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco might carry weight with both camps, especially if accompanied by a package of tangible political and economic benefits for a post‑war Sudan.

The Abraham Accords are undoubtedly much more than a mere branding exercise. Given an unprecedented crisis, the signatories should surely be willing to act together to foster peace and regional stability.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem post online titled: "Sudan's war poses a challenge for Abraham Accords partners", 16 June 2026:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-899442

Testing EU-Israel relations

2026-06-08T21:58:54.946+01:00

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 9 June 2026

A major EU summit, a meeting of the full European Council, is scheduled for June 18–19 in Brussels. The European Council brings together the heads of state or government of the 27 EU member states. According to the draft agenda and a report in the UK’s Daily Telegraph, EU leaders are expected, under the Middle East subject heading, to accuse Israel of a long list of misdemeanors and worse, and issue a series of rebukes and censures.

The Telegraph apparently gained access to “draft conclusions” to be discussed at the summit. They reveal an extensive list of charges that EU leaders intend to aim at Israel, starting with condemnation of the “persistent and devastating” humanitarian crisis in Gaza and proceeding to a declaration of support for Lebanon’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

The bloc’s 27 prime ministers and presidents will apparently express “serious concern” about “continued ceasefire violations” in Lebanon, and call for a “permanent end” to hostilities. They will commit the EU to the welfare of the Lebanese people and their state-building efforts, and offer to provide emergency aid to the more than one million displaced by the conflict. The possibility may also be raised of sending a mission of civilian and military experts, as well as financial support, to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF).

The EU seems unaware that the Lebanese government is as anxious to degrade Hezbollah’s military capabilities as Israel, which explains the recent Lebanon-Israel ceasefire negotiations. Any intervention by the EU seems even less appropriate in light of the agreement reached on June 3 between Lebanon and Israel, when they moved from their previously announced truce toward an actual implementation framework for a ceasefire.

The ceasefire will come into effect, the agreement specifies, provided there is a “complete cessation” of fire by Hezbollah and the withdrawal of its operatives from the sector south of the Litani River. Once those conditions are met, Israel commits to halt its offensive operations.

The agreement envisages the LAF exercising sole security control in ”pilot zones” in southern Lebanon from which all non‑state actors, explicitly including Hezbollah, are to be excluded. Any sort of intervention by the EU would appear to run counter to that provision.

The details obtained by the Telegraph indicate that EU leaders are about to call on Israel to reopen border crossings to Gaza, allow in “unimpeded” humanitarian aid “at scale”, and permit the UN, its agencies and non-governmental organizations to work freely there. “Freely” presumably means not checking whether staff have Hamas connections.

They will further demand the immediate repeal of the new “discriminatory” death penalty law for terrorism introduced in March, because they fear it will be used exclusively against Palestinians.

EU chiefs will condemn Israel’s “mistreatment” of activist detainees following the interception of the Global Sumud lotilla, which attempted to break the naval blockade of the Gaza Strip. They will, moreover, apparently call for EU sanctions to be prepared “against extremist ministers”.

This probably refers to Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, widely criticized for posting a video of himself taunting the detained campaigners as they knelt with their hands tied behind their backs.

The EU will apparently tell Israel to stop the expansion of settlements, condemn “unlawful, unilateral actions”, and urge it to protect Palestinians from settler violence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

In a direct rebuke to Benjamin Netanyahu, the EU will also say it “firmly rejects Israel’s announcement that it will seize 70 per cent of Gaza’s territory.”

In short it looks as though those who regard Israel as the fount of all evil are about to have a field day.

The summit will be chaired by the Council’s president, Antonio Costa.

Both Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EC, and its High Representative for foreign affairs, Kaja Kallas, will be present. The EU-Israel relationship has been under significant strain ever since May 20, 2025, when the EU began conducting a review of whether Israel is complying with the human-rights obligations contained in Article 2 of the long-standing EU–Israel Association Agreement.

The relationship is now characterized by three simultaneous trends: Continued strategic and economic cooperation; growing criticism from many EU governments regarding Gaza and settlement policy; and increasing willingness to use sanctions and other restrictive measures against Israel.

For the past sixteen years Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, consistently blocked EU measures directed against Israel. That veto disappeared following Hungary's change of government in April. As a result, EU foreign ministers agreed in May 2026 to impose sanctions on the more extremist Israeli settlers and related organizations, while simultaneously expanding sanctions against Hamas figures.

There is still no consensus among member states for the most far-reaching criticisms or anti-Israel measures. Countries generally favoring stronger pressure include Spain, Ireland and Belgium, and also to varying degrees, France and some Nordic countries. These governments have been among the strongest advocates of sanctions, trade measures, or review of the Association Agreement.

Countries generally favoring caution include Germany, Italy and several central European governments. These states often support criticism of settlement violence and humanitarian concerns, while remaining cautious about broader economic or diplomatic penalties.

Realistically, the political mood across much of Europe is too far gone for the EU’s strong criticism of Israel, as predicted by the Telegraph, to be completely averted. But forewarned is forearmed. Back from her ambassadorial post in the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, the new head of Israel’s hasbara (public relations), now has the opportunity for a pre-emptive strike.

She and her team have the chance, ahead of a storm of adverse criticism, to explain that Israel is engaged in protecting itself and its people against forces intent on their destruction. Iran has explicitly declared its purpose is to eliminate Israel and its population from the Middle East, and its proxies have demonstrated their willingness to carry through on that intention. Hamas committed a genocide of its own on October 7, 2023; Hezbollah refuses to abide by the Lebanon-Israel ceasefire deal and continues to strike into northern Israel; the Houthis proudly wave a flag inscribed with “Death to Israel; a curse upon the Jews”.

The EU must be made to understand that Israel will not subscribe to its own annihilation.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online, 9 June 2026:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-898692

A new Sunni axis

2026-06-01T20:20:40.631+01:00

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 2 June 2026

“Sunni axis” is a term that is gaining currency. It refers to a new security alliance of Sunni states that seems to be emerging. At its heart is a Pakistan-Saudi Arabia mutual defense pact signed on September 17, 2025 – the Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement (SMDA).

One noteworthy feature of the SMDA pact is an explicit collective‑defense clause that closely echoes NATO’s Article 5, namely that “any attack on one country will be viewed as an attack on both.” This has led some commentators to dub the agreement an Islamic NATO.

This Pakistan-Saudi arrangement, according to Pakistani ministers, is not only capable of being expanded, but action is in hand to do so. Turkey and Qatar have been mentioned as the first states to turn the bilateral pact into a collective‑security grouping. Egypt is a fifth potential member.

Back in January Turkey was said to be in advanced discussions to join the SMDA pact. It seemed a natural and appropriate extension of an existing partnership. Turkey is Pakistan’s second‑largest arms supplier, and the military‑industrial connection is flourishing in terms of aircraft, drones, and naval assets.

In an interview with Reuters, reported on January 15, 2026, Pakistan’s Minister for Defense Production, Raza Hayat Harraj, said: “The Pakistan–Saudi Arabia–Turkey trilateral agreement is something that is already in the pipeline.”

His words presaged an axis that grouped key Sunni powers (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkey, Qatar, potentially Egypt) on one side of a regional balance, with Iran’s mainly Shi’ite, but essentially anti-Israel, network (Iran, Iraq‑based pro-Iran militias, Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, etc.) on the other.

However, something of a change of tone seemed to emerge in a interview given to the Bloomberg news agency by Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif on May 13. While discussing the idea that Turkey and Qatar may join the mutual defense cooperation pact between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, Asif said “if Qatar and Turkey also join this existing agreement, it will be a welcome development” – a comment that clearly viewed their participation as a possibility rather than “in the pipeline,” as his ministerial colleague had claimed back in January.

Whether there has been a cooling of enthusiasm on Pakistan’s part is difficult to assess. It is just possible that the glitch is caused by the prospect of a tighter Turkish-Saudi connection. They remain, in many arenas, competitors for leadership of the Sunni world. Moreover, despite the recent rapprochement, relations have been anything but warm over some of the past eight years.

It was on October 2, 2018 that Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul. Turkey reacted with fury. In a series of speeches and leaks, Turkey’s President Erdogan called the murder “savage,” said it was ordered from the “highest levels” of the Saudi state, and demanded the extradition of the Saudi suspects.

Turkish authorities opened a criminal investigation, searched the Saudi consulate and the consul’s residence, and leaked detailed allegations to the media about Khashoggi’s strangling, dismemberment and the pre‑planned nature of the operation. Turkey then launched a trial in absentia of 26 Saudis, deepening the rift with Saudi Arabia, which insisted its own courts had jurisdiction.

The thaw took a few years to develop. Finally on April 7, 2022 an Istanbul court halted the trial and transferred the Khashoggi case to Saudi Arabia. On the 28th Erdogan visited Saudi Arabia, met King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and said he hoped “to launch a new era”. On June 21, 2022, MBS paid his first visit to Turkey since 2018.

On the face of it, Turkish-Saudi relations should be firmly re‑established, but negotiations aimed at bringing Turkey into the Pakistan–Saudi security pact have been dragging on now for half a year, and the arrangement is still not ready to be implemented. Instead, the political narrative has drifted toward a flexible framework in which Turkey would be less than a full partner.

If actually completed on the lines originally envisaged, the new Sunni axis would amalgamate four formidable components: Saudi and Qatari financial resources and arms‑procurement; Turkey’s NATO‑standard conventional forces and advanced defense‑industrial base; Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent and ballistic‑missile capabilities; and Egypt’s massed conventional army, control of the Suez corridor, and diplomatic weight in Arab and Gulf security affairs.

These powerful elements could theoretically give it the ability to deter conventional attacks and influence conflicts across the Middle East and beyond. In reality, however, converting the security pact into a tightly disciplined combat-ready military alliance is less than likely. Internal divergences, domestic constraints, and each state’s ties to Washington, Beijing, Moscow and Brussels would rule it out.

Even so, several interested parties and groupings perceive this Sunni axis as at least potentially threatening.

Iran and its allies would naturally be apprehensive about the emergence of a Sunni power bloc opposed to the Iranian regime’s bid for regional and religious dominance in the Middle East, and widely seen as a counterweight to Iran’s Axis of Resistance.

Indian analysts have already warned that a consolidated Pakistan–Saudi–Turkey security structure, backed by oil wealth and Pakistani nuclear capability, would upset the current security balance and challenge India’s defense environment.

Some Israeli strategic commentators believe that a more cohesive Sunni military grouping involving Turkey and Qatar could constrain Israel’s operational freedom. Both Turkey and Qatar have a history of supporting Hamas.

Some eastern Mediterranean states, such as Greece, Cyprus and Armenia, are already at odds with Ankara, and view with concern the prospect of Turkey being backed in the future by Gulf money and Pakistani deterrence.

But all this calculation seems premature. Extending the Pakistan-Saudi defense and security pact to embrace other Sunni states, such as Turkey, Qatar and Egypt, seems far from imminent. Even Turkey, apparently on the verge of full accession back in January, is still hovering in the wings, talking about the possibility.

In short, if the enhanced alliance emerges it would indeed be a significant new factor in the region’s political alignment. Even in prospect it is enough to shape calculations in Tehran, New Delhi, Jerusalem and Washington.

But a new Sunni axis simply does not yet exist.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and in the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Will a new Sunni axis reshape the Middle East?" 2 June 2026:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-897859

The bid to recapture Lebanon’s sovereignty

2026-05-25T19:14:12.829+01:00

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 26 May 2026

Ever since he was elected Lebanon’s president in January 2025, Joseph Aoun has emphasized that his primary aim is to end the humiliation of Hezbollah acting with impunity as “a state within a state”. The nation, he decided, will no longer allow its sovereignty to be leased out to Iran or its proxy. He will reclaim it.

National sovereignty was being flouted on a daily basis by Iran’s ambassador-designate to Lebanon, Mohammad Reza Sheibani. Not yet formally accredited, he had distinguished his brief period in office by continually interfering in the nation's internal politics. Moreover, he used his diplomatic cover to support Hezbollah’s military operations. On March 24 the government declared him persona non grata and gave him until March 29 to leave the country.

"The ambassador will not leave Lebanon,” an Iranian diplomatic source told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on the 28th. This decision, he informed them, was in accordance with the wishes of Hezbollah and the speaker of parliament, Nabih Berri. Berri, a Shi’ite Muslim, is a known supporter of Hezbollah.

So Sheibani remained in his residence in Beirut, and on March 30 Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, told a press briefing in Tehran: “Our embassy in Lebanon remains operational.”

No greater affront to a nation’s sovereignty could be envisaged. Iran was telling the world that the Lebanese government was not the master in its own house. Aoun took action. He wrote to UN Secretary-General António Guterres and the Security Council President.

The complaint, which was filed officially on April 21, accused Sheibani of taking action, including issuing statements to the media, that amounted to direct interference in the nation’s internal affairs. It went on to charge Iran with multiple violations including "interfering in Lebanon's sovereign decision-making and entangling the state in a war it never chose". Moreover Lebanon accused Iran of "deploying Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps personnel in Lebanon under the guise of diplomatic activity.”

The letter challenges Iran’s accounts to the UN about Israeli strikes in Beirut, arguing that Tehran’s narrative is “full of falsehoods”. And it accuses Iran of violating the Vienna Convention and international diplomatic norms by refusing to comply with Lebanon’s sovereign decision to expel Sheibani. The 1961 Vienna Convention sets out the rules governing diplomacy between states.

Lebanon invited the UN to recognize and condemn these actions as breaches of international law, and to confirm that its order to expel Sheibani is legally valid and must be respected. A response is awaited. Unfortunately, effective action from the Security Council on this issue, as on so many, is less than assured.

This effort to assert Lebanon’s national sovereignty is only the most recent of Aoun’s attempts. Parliament elected him on January 8, 2025, after more than two years of a presidential vacancy. With the restoration of national sovereignty his priority, in August 2025 Aoun and his cabinet instructed the army to develop a comprehensive plan to bring all weapons in the country under the control of state security forces, thereby ending Hezbollah’s autonomy.

One month later Lebanon’s army chief, Rodolphe Haykal, presented the cabinet with a multi‑phase, region‑by‑region plan for disarming Hezbollah and other non‑state armed groups, with the ultimate goal of ensuring that all military hardware in Lebanon would be held exclusively by the state. It began with a first phase aimed at removing Hezbollah’s weapons south of the Litani river by the end of 2025.

The cabinet authorized the army to begin enacting it at once. But it soon became clear that government forces lacked the capacity to implement the scheme. The army made some progress in dislodging Hezbollah from areas of southern Lebanon, but the plan was basically unviable. The state could not regain national sovereignty without help.

The first 2026 Israel-Lebanon ceasefire deal was agreed on April 16, announced by US President Donald Trump following discussions with prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Aoun. Initially set to last ten days, the ceasefire was subsequently extended by three weeks on April 23, and then, on May 15, by an additional 45 days.

There had been no official contact between Israel and Lebanon for four decades, so these negotiations were to be welcomed. But what is the point of a ceasefire between two countries not in conflict with each other? It is not the Lebanese armed forces but the uncontrollable Hezbollah that, at Iran’s behest, is attacking northern Israel, while Israel is trying to degrade its capacity to do so.

Aoun is in a difficult position. On May 18 Lebanon’s al‑Jadeed TV channel published “a rare glimpse into Lebanese public opinion,” undertaken by the Beirut‑based statistics firm Information International. It showed that Hezbollah still enjoys the support of much of the Muslim population – as against Christian, Maronite and Druze citizens, who are overwhelmingly opposed – and Aoun is fearful that too obvious an alliance with Israel could stir up civil conflict. So for public consumption he steers clear of any suggestion of a Lebanon-Israel collaboration to disempower Hezbollah. He presents it as an effort to end further civilian casualties and structural damage.

In reality, however, preventing further devastation within Lebanon is dependent not on a pointless ceasefire agreement, but on Hezbollah’s actions, and Aoun has been unable to dissuade Hezbollah from continuing its armed attacks. The ceasefire has therefore had no effect on Israel’s response. On May 17 the media reported IDF strikes at nearly 100 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon.

Israel also acts, when the opportunity arises, to eliminate known senior Hezbollah officials. For example on May 6, in an airstrike on the southern suburbs of Beirut, a commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force, Ahmed Ali Balout, was targeted and killed.

It may be inexpedient for Aoun to admit it, but the truth is that the more Israel weakens Hezbollah, the more the president moves towards his objective of re-establishing Lebanon’s sovereignty over the terrorist organization.

Published in the Jerusalem Post titled "Recapture Lebanon's sovereignty", and the Jerusalem Post on-line, 26 May 2026:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-897227

Published in Eurasia Review, 3 June 2026:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/30052026-the-bid-to-recapture-lebanons-sovereignty-oped/

Two states – Macron’s final effort

2026-05-18T19:33:30.961+01:00

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 19 May 2026

France has announced that it will host an international meeting in Paris on June 12, 2026, dedicated to realizing the two‑state solution. With barely a year left in office, French president Emmanuel Macron is making a final bid to become the power broker who secures a sovereign state for the Palestinian people.

This will be Macron’s second attempt at seizing the initiative in the Israel-Palestinian dispute.

On July 28–30, 2025 in New York Macron co‑chaired a UN conference on implementing the two‑state solution. It was resumed during the UN General Assembly’s high‑level week in late September 2025, and it was there that Macron announced France’s recognition of a State of Palestine.

Macron is following a well-trodden path. For decades French leaders have tried to position France as a prime mover in solving the Israel-Palestinian issue. Time and again they have attempted to convene multilateral conferences to resolve the question. Their initiatives have invariably proved ineffective.

French presidents have aspired to lead the game in the Middle East ever since France assumed its colonial role there, after the First World War. At first, following Israel’s independence in 1948, France emerged as one of its strongest allies in Europe. The close military and political ties binding the two countries culminated in joint operations against Egypt during the 1956 Suez crisis.

Following Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War, though, France’s then-president, Charles de Gaulle, dramatically changed policy. He condemned Israel as the aggressor, imposed an arms embargo, and reoriented French diplomacy toward the Arab world.

De Gaulle sought influence in the Middle East by trying to act as an independent power broker, balancing the US and the USSR. In pursuit of this strategy France became a leading European advocate of a pro-Arab – and later pro-Palestinian – stance.

In 1980 France was central in an early European bid to shape a comprehensive peace process – the Venice Declaration, which pushed for Palestinian self-determination.

It is certainly true that while long advocating the creation of a Palestinian state, France has consistently defended Israel’s right to exist in security – though, belying the famed logicality of French thought, the possible incompatibility between these two positions has never been acknowledged.

A certain inconsistency is also apparent in the planned June event in Paris. In a televised address on March 3, Macron emphasized that Middle East peace “can only be achieved through diplomatic talks,” yet this forthcoming meeting is framed as a gathering featuring charitable and humanitarian bodies and networks.

The opening move, reported by France’s Le Monde on April 30, was a video message from the French foreign minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, played to a gathering of several hundred peace activists in Tel Aviv – the "People's Peace Summit". It had been organized by "It's Time", a grouping of some 80 Israeli peace and civil society organizations working to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict through a two-state political agreement.

"Your presence here,” said Barrot, “is an act of resistance against fatalism and resignation."

His choice of audience indicates that the French intend to draw heavily on established Israeli and Palestinian peace NGOs, dialogue groups, and civil‑society networks for their June gathering. So far France has not released a list of the bodies invited to attend, nor a formal participants list, but it can be assumed that a core of Israeli and Palestinian civil‑society organizations have indicated their willingness to engage.

As for the agenda, based on official statements the meeting is explicitly “dedicated to the long‑touted two‑state solution,” tying France’s recognition of Palestine to a structured set of discussions on how to realize that vision politically and practically. The design is for “Israeli and Palestinian civil societies” to make their voices heard. So the meeting will not, apparently, be a direct one-track negotiation, but rather panels and working groups highlighting joint initiatives, confidence‑building projects and peace education.

France’s view of itself as a possible facilitator of an Israel-Palestinian accord has led it into less than productive actions on more than one occasion. In July 2008 former French President Nicolas Sarkozy induced more than 40 heads of state, including Israel’s then-prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and the president of the PA, Mahmoud Abbas, to attend a summit in Paris. There he pushed through a concept grandiosely titled the “Union for the Mediterranean”. It initiated some useful practical developments in its early years, but it attracts little public attention nowadays, and it is far from flourishing. In 2024 its secretary-general stated that "the sole viable vision for the region" was the two-state solution.

In 2009 Sarkozy offered to host another international conference in order, as he said, to facilitate the peace process. Newly elected US President Obama, however, intent on pursuing his own initiative, rejected the overture. Nothing daunted, Sarkozy tried again in January 2010 and was again rebuffed.

This nostrum of a Paris-based international conference seems to have become an idée fixe in French thinking. It reappeared in December 2014, when then-President François Hollande took the lead in drafting a Security Council resolution outlining proposals for an Israeli-Palestinian final-status deal, initiated – of course – by an international peace conference to take place in Paris.

That came to nothing, but on January 15, 2017 Hollande actually achieved France’s long-held ambition.

He hosted an international peace conference in Paris attended by representatives from about 70 countries including then-US Secretary of State, John Kerry. Nothing of substance resulted. The final communiqué reaffirmed support for a two-state solution, but the occasion was rather like a performance of Hamlet without either the prince or his father’s ghost. Neither Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, nor PA president Mahmoud Abbas, had been invited.

The French have a saying: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (the more things change, the more they're the same). Here we are in 2026 with France’s current president organizing a broadly based conference seeking to rally international partners around the two-state solution.

The underlying reality, though, remains. Whatever the French leadership may believe, France is not a principal in the perennial Israel-Palestine issue. Its opinion, and therefore its influence, has historically counted for little. That remains as true in 2026 as it always was.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "France’s latest bid to broker Israel-Palestinian peace not likely to work," 19 May 2026:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-896508

Published in Eurasia Review, 22 May 2026:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/22052026-two-states-macrons-final-effort-oped/

Israel and the UAE – brothers-in-arms

2026-05-12T05:19:00.001+01:00

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 12 May 2026

On May 4 Iran fired 12 ballistic missiles, three cruise missiles, and four drones into the United Arab Emirates. This latest attack came in response to President Donald Trump’s effort to ensure free navigation for commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

Initially kept secret, and later disclosed only through limited specialist reporting, is the interesting information that IDF personnel operated Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system to intercept the incoming Iranian missiles, but from within the UAE. Not much has been made of it in the media, but this was the first time that Israel’s advanced technology has been deployed and used operationally in combat on foreign soil.

It proves, if proof were needed, that Israel–UAE military cooperation is a rapidly maturing strategic partnership. Embedded in the Abraham Accords framework, the collaboration is driven above all by a shared perception of the threat posed by Iran.

Early in the war, at the request of UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed in a direct conversation with Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel quietly deployed an Iron Dome battery plus IDF personnel to the UAE. Reports indicate that Israeli crews have since intercepted dozens of Iranian missiles and drones aimed at UAE targets.

In parallel, the IAF carried out strikes on short‑range missile launch sites in Iran that were assessed as threats to the UAE and other Gulf states, linking Israeli offensive operations directly to Emirati defense. On May 14 the Jerusalem Post reported that Benjamin Netanyahu visited the UAE and met with Zayed while the fighting was going on. The meeting yielded a “historic breakthrough” according to Netanyahu’s office.

Yet even before the current Iran war, there was a clear trend of growing military and defense‑industrial cooperation between Israel and the UAE.

It was back in August 2025 that the Washington Institute for Near East Policy published a survey titled: “Israel-UAE Defense Cooperation Grows under the Abraham Accords”. It included reference to a possible forthcoming deal in which the UAE’s Edge Group would procure the Hermes 900 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) from the Israeli company Elbit Systems—including transfer of technology and localized production.

That would, it said, potentially shift "the geopolitical balance in the Gulf.” If this deal was indeed finalized, it has not, on the grounds of industrial confidentiality, been made public. Reports have appeared, though, of multi-million dollar sales of the Hermes UAV to undisclosed customers.

What is known is that since normalization in 2020, the UAE has acquired Israeli‑made Barak and Spyder air‑defense systems, embedding Israeli technology in its force structure. In October 2022 an Israeli‑made Barak system was deployed in the UAE, and by 2023 the two states conducted their first bilateral naval exercise and unveiled a jointly developed unmanned surface vessel.

In 2025, UAE Mirage 2000‑9s flew alongside Israeli and US aircraft in a multinational exercise in Greece, signaling that Emirati participation in exercises that openly include Israel has become routine.

Put together with the deployment of an Iron Dome system within the UAE itself, what emerges, if not quite a mutual defense treaty, is close to the collaboration expected in a signed and sealed security partnership.

Way back in 2017, three years before the Abraham Accords, a senior UAE military figure publicly described the UAE and Israel as “like brothers”. In an interview with the US outlet Defense & Aerospace Report, UAE Major General Abdullah al‑Hashmi went on to describe the US as the “older brother”, overseeing any differences between them.

So can Israel and the UAE fairly be called “brothers‑in‑arms”?

Israeli and Emirati forces have now fought on the same side in the same live theatre, with Israelis directly defending Emirati territory from Iranian attack and coordinating offensive action against Iranian launch sites. The UAE hosts and operates Israeli air‑defense and early‑warning systems and trains regularly with Israeli forces, which is the kind of shoulder‑to‑shoulder activity many would intuitively associate with “brothers‑in‑arms”.

The cooperation, though, is framed around the specific threat posed by Iran. There is no formal or explicit public commitment that either state would come to the other’s aid in future conflicts. Above all, the relationship remains constrained by wider Arab public opinion, and the UAE’s need to preserve maneuvering room with other regional actors.

All the same Israel and the UAE have crossed a previously unbridgeable Rubicon. Israeli troops, Iron Dome, and even – it is reliably reported – state-of-the=-art Israeli prototype Iron Beam and Spectro systems have been deployed in combat from Emirati soil, with real‑time Israeli intelligence guiding UAE and coalition responses. All of which makes it politically and operationally easier, next time, to set up joint structures previously almost unimaginable – the permanent basing outside of Israel of some Israeli systems, joint missile‑defense planning, and regularized trilateral planning with US Central Command.

In fact that model is already beginning to appear, in uneven ways, across the Abraham Accords bloc. It could, if the war drags on, become the basis of a looser regional security architecture focused on Iran and its projectiles rather than on broader Arab–Israeli peace.

Among the Abraham Accords states, the UAE and Bahrain are emerging as front‑line adopters of the new model. They openly normalize with Israel, quietly integrate Israeli air‑ and missile‑defense, intelligence, and naval cooperation, and plug this into US‑led multilateral drills and emerging regional defense schemes aimed squarely at Iran and its projectiles.

By contrast, Morocco - and Sudan before the civil war - were “selective adopters”, taking Israeli UAVs, air‑defense systems, intelligence and doctrine sharing, but applying them primarily to their own local rivalries like Algeria and Western Sahara.

Introduced in the US Senate in March 2026 was an Abraham Accords Defense Cooperation Act. If passed it would create a formal Pentagon‑run “US–Abraham Accords Defense Cooperation Initiative”, deepening military cooperation with Abraham Accords countries specifically to deter Iran and its proxies.

The Bill is still at the very start of the legislative process, but commentators believe that current political dynamics in Congress give it a real—though by no means guaranteed—chance of being folded into this year’s annual US defense Bill.

So a possible outcome of this Israel-UAE “brothers-in-arms” moment is a US‑enabled security ecosystem in which Israel and the UAE collaborate closely when Iran is the adversary, and other Accords states plug in more selectively – in short, a tighter, closer, more secure partnership.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Israel and UAE: A brothers-in-arms alliance against Iran's growing threat", 12 May 2026:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-895776

Published in Eurasia Review, 15 May 2026:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/15052026-israel-and-the-uae-brothers-in-arms-oped/

Gaza’s future on hold

2026-05-05T05:41:00.004+01:00

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 5 May 2026

On April 19 the New York Times, citing two senior Hamas officials, reported that Hamas is prepared to hand over to the Palestinian administrative committee the thousands of automatic rifles and other weapons used by its police and internal security forces in Gaza. The officials framed this as a significant concession because Hamas, having re-established its authority over roughly half of the Strip, had so far adamantly refused to surrender its weapons.

The Palestinian administrative committee (formally the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza) is one of the bodies created under the Board of Peace, the high powered controlling group led by US President Donald Trump, set up to oversee the ceasefire arrangements.

What is apparently on offer falls well short of the full disarmament and demilitarization specified in the Trump 20-point peace plan for Gaza, which requires Hamas’s military wing to be disarmed and disbanded.

The offer conveyed by the Hamas officials presupposes that both the Board of Peace and its Palestinian administrative committee are up and running. That, however, is nowhere near the present position. While both bodies formally exist on paper and have begun limited activity, neither yet operates as a fully functioning, governing authority in Gaza. The Board of Peace is still consolidating its role and membership, while the Palestinian committee is only partially active.

The Board held a first convening session on February 19, at which members and observers pledged roughly 17 billion dollars in reconstruction funding (10 billion from the US, 7 billion from member states). At that meeting Nickolay Mladenov, a Bulgarian politician who has been given the title of High Representative for Gaza, said the process of recruiting a new transitional Palestinian police force had begun and "just in the first few hours we have 2,000 people who have applied".

That hopeful beginning did not lead on to a successful outcome. The plan envisaged a new 5,000-member police force operational in Gaza by late April, but recruitment proceeded at a snail’s pace because of the vetting required to exclude applicants with Hamas connections and past members of the security forces of the Palestinian Authority. According to the most current assessment, the transitional Palestinian police force is not even close to being deployable.

Mladenov has said the Palestinian police force must be the primary law-and-order agency in Gaza, but supported by the International Stabilization Force (ISF), another body under the overall authority of the Board of Peace. Created by UN Security Council Resolution 2803, the ISF is described in the Gaza peace plan as a multinational agency charged with overseeing the disarmament of weaponized groups and liaising with both Israel and Egypt to ensure the security of Gaza. It is intended to act in conjunction with the newly trained and vetted Palestinian police force.

What of the Board of Peace? It exists, and is functioning mainly as a diplomatic and financial coordinating body concerned with organizing pledge conferences, framework decisions and appointments, but it is not yet a fully operative administrative government in Gaza in the conventional sense. It is eventually envisaged as having sweeping legislative and executive authority over Gaza’s transition.

The top tier of the Board of Peace is composed of Trump and senior international figures, some named explicitly and others, at the moment, merely invited. Among the named members are US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, former UK prime minister Tony Blair, and President of the World Bank Ajay Banga. No less than ten heads of state have accepted the invitation to join the Board; others are still considering.

Immediately beneath the top tier is the operational body known as the Gaza Executive Board. Some members, like Witkoff, Kushner and Blair, are drawn from the main Board. A whole range of others including diplomats, ministers and generals come from countries including Turkey, Qatar, Egypt and the Netherlands. It is described as in a “formation” phase.

Beneath the Executive Board is the 15-member Palestinian technocratic committee – one of the basic new bodies envisaged in the Gaza peace plan. Explicitly described as “apolitical”, it is intended to stand apart from Hamas, Fatah and other factions, and its members are to be “independent technical experts” or “qualified” professionals, not party functionaries. The committee was to be the lowest tier of the new Gaza governance structure, tasked with day‑to‑day administration and service restoration.

It has in fact been formally constituted, and is headed by Dr Ali Sha’ath, a former Palestinian Authority deputy minister.

The committee has issued a mission statement describing itself as charged with “restoring fundamental services” in Gaza and “rebuilding civil institutions,” with priority on security, electricity, water, healthcare, and education. Although it has indeed engaged in early administrative and planning work, so far it has had a minimal effect in controlling Gaza’s territory, security, and political life.

Not one of these bodies, however, from the Board of Peace down, is yet a fully empowered governing institution in Gaza. In fact there is no single Gazan authority that can say it has both the mandate and the tools – police, budget and bureaucracy – to govern in a comprehensive way.

The failure to disarm Hamas – let alone wrest the governance of nearly half of the Gaza Strip from its hands – inhibits all efforts to restore normality to the daily life of its inhabitants. The possibility, yet to be tested, that Hamas is prepared to surrender its stock of small arms is encouraging, but the body it is prepared to deal with – the Palestinian administrative committee – is not yet fully functional.

Has Gaza a hopeful future under the terms of Trump’s peace plan?

Confidence in a post-Hamas structure needs to be earned. Mistrust in the imposed conditions of the peace plan could be allayed by providing greater transparency about the governance architecture, perhaps by inviting some appropriate Palestinians onto the Board of Peace. Perhaps Gaza’s governance could eventually be linked to a wider national framework and future elections. The partially operative institutions that already exist could play a constructive transitional role.

Gaza’s future may be on hold, but despite disruptive efforts like the Global Sumud Flotilla, happily scotched, the green shoots of hope have started to sprout.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Gaza peace plan faces delays as Hamas only signals partial disarmament", 5 May 2026:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-895060

Published in Eurasia Review, 8 May 2026:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/08052026-gazas-future-on-hold-oped/

Some straight thinking about Lebanon

2026-04-29T05:48:00.002+01:00

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 29 April 2026

On the evening of April 23 newscasts reported that, following talks at the White House, US President Donald Trump had announced that the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire, due to end on the 27th, would be extended by three weeks. Discussions would continue. The same bulletins carried news of a heavy rocket strike by Hezbollah into northern Israel.

No-one could deny that face-to-face Israel-Lebanon negotiations are long overdue – most would say by many decades. The two countries have been technically at war for 78 years. Lebanon’s participation in the attack by the joint Arab armies in 1948 on the new-born state of Israel has never been formally resolved, as it was with Egypt and Jordan.

For the same reason no mutually agreed international border exists between Lebanon and Israel. The old British Mandate-era lines were never re‑demarcated after 1948. The current provisional land boundary is the UN’s “Blue Line”, endorsed in UN Security Council Resolutions. A joint agreement on an internationally recognized border is long overdue.

Both these matters are certainly in need of resolution. But the current negotiations are presented by Trump and much of the media as talks leading to a deal that would require Israel to cease military operations within Lebanon, and Hezbollah to cease launching rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel.

Not many voices are raised to point out that this agenda is a fiction. The Lebanese delegation is not in a position to negotiate on behalf of Hezbollah. In fact Lebanon is at the table precisely because the government is unable to control Hezbollah, which retains enough power within Lebanon to continue acting as a “state within a state”. What Lebanese president, Joseph Aoun, and his government want – without being able to acknowledge it openly – is Israel’s support, and perhaps help, in eliminating Hezbollah’s ability to act unilaterally in support of Iran’s revolutionary regime.

According to the terms of the November 2024 Hezbollah-Israel ceasefire agreement, negotiated via US mediators, Hezbollah forces were to have moved out of the region between the Litani river and the Blue Line by January 26, 2025, and been replaced by the Lebanese army.

Achieving this desirable state of affairs – an objective first set out in UN Resolution 1701 back in 2006 – has been frustrated for 20 years by a combination of Hezbollah’s dominance within Lebanon, and the weakness of successive Lebanese governments in countering it.

The 2024 deal proved equally ineffective in curbing Hezbollah, but it did produce one positive result. Ever since Lebanese President Michel Aoun’s term ended in November 2022, parliament had repeatedly failed to elect a successor, largely because Hezbollah and its allies blocked agreement. After the ceasefire Hezbollah allowed Joseph Aoun to be elected President and the new government to be installed.

The new government immediately began conducting negotiations with US Special Envoy Tom Barrack aimed at disarming Hezbollah, establishing the state’s monopoly on weapons, and asserting government control in Lebanon.

On August 5, 2025 the Lebanese cabinet instructed the army to develop a comprehensive plan to bring all weapons in the country under the control of state security forces, thereby ending Hezbollah’s autonomy.

One month later Lebanon’s army chief Rodolphe Haykal presented the government with a scheme designed to ensure that, by the end of 2025, Hezbollah would be fully disarmed and military hardware would be held exclusively by Lebanon’s state forces. The cabinet authorized the army to begin implementing it at once. Hezbollah leaders immediately made it clear that they opposed being disarmed.

The army made some progress in dislodging Hezbollah from areas of southern Lebanon, but it soon became clear that the government simply lacked the power to implement the plan. So from March 2026 onward Aoun began pushing the idea of face‑to‑face talks with Israel as part of a broader strategy that would ultimately bring Hezbollah’s weapons, and therefore Hezbollah itself, under state control.

For presentational purposes the opening steps would be about ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal. Hezbollah’s disarmament would be presented as the logical next stage. The obvious fact that the government was in no position to offer an Hezbollah ceasefire was conveniently sidelined.

The reality is that the government will be able to undertake Hezbollah disarmament only once it has brought the organization fully under state control, and this will only be possible with Israel’s help and support. How else is Hezbollah to be brought to its knees? Aoun implicitly recognized this when, on March 9, he issued his four‑point proposal calling for “direct discussions with Israel under international auspices”.

In a national televised address, Aoun defended direct talks with Israel, an enemy state, as “not weakness,” stressing they are aimed at protecting Lebanese civilians and preventing a Gaza‑style devastation in the south.

In fact, preventing further devastation within Lebanon is dependent not on offering an unenforceable ceasefire, but on Hezbollah’s actions. If it continues to support Iran with missile strikes into Israel, then Israel has reserved the right to strike back.

As Aoun frames the situation for public consumption, he steers completely clear of any suggestion of a Lebanon-Israel collaboration in disempowering Hezbollah. Hezbollah still enjoys the support of much of the Shi’ite population, and he is fearful of civil conflict.

The diplomatic track with Israel is designed to create the conditions in which the argument for Hezbollah’s independent arsenal erodes, and full state control becomes politically feasible.

A more realistic assessment, perhaps, was made by Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter. Standing outside the State Department after the first session of direct Israel-Lebanon talks, he told reporters: “We discovered today that we’re on the same side of the equation… We are both united in liberating Lebanon from an occupation power dominated by Iran called Hezbollah.” He also said that “the Lebanese government made it clear… that they no longer want to be ‘occupied’ by Hezbollah.”

Trashing Leiter’s portrayal as propaganda, Hezbollah refuted the suggestion that Lebanon is “united” with Israel against it. As for the Lebanese government, it has neither endorsed nor repudiated Leiter’s impression of the situation. The question is: regardless of whether it is totally accurate, is it “true” in the sense of reflecting where Lebanon and Israel actually stand?

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled:
"Israel and Lebanon’s complicated talks: Is Hezbollah’s disarmament possible?", 29 April 2026:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-894321

Published in Eurasia Review, 11 May 2026:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/01052026-some-straight-thinking-about-lebanon-oped/

The Houthis join in

2026-04-23T08:45:00.001+01:00

Published in Eurasia Review, 27 April 2026

The Houthis, who currently dominate northern and western Yemen and most of the country’s population, have decided to participate actively in the US-Iran conflict. After nearly a month of remaining on the sidelines, on March 28 they signaled their entry into the war by firing a barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel. Most were intercepted, and no casualties were reported.

Within roughly 24 hours a second wave of cruise missiles and drones was launched, and were again intercepted.

Since then the group has fired ballistic missiles at the Tel Aviv area, and on April 4 the IDF reported that a missile launched from Yemen fell in an open area in Israel without casualties or damage. Missile and drone attacks in the Red Sea and against US naval targets have ceased for the moment, though the threat persists.

The Houthis are fully aligned with the philosophy underlying the hardline revolutionary Iranian regime. They proclaim their beliefs and purposes on their flag. Sandwiched between the words “Allah is great” and “Victory to Islam”, both in a suitable green, come inscribed in blood-red: “Death to America”, “Death to Israel”, and the unequivocally antisemitic: “A curse on the Jews”.

It would be an mistake, however, to assume that these basic articles of faith are the major motivators of the Houthi leadership. Unlike Iran’s other proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, both well embedded in their respective territories, the Houthis’ primary concern is not anti-Israel operations. They have their own fish to fry. For a decade or more the Houthis have sought to extend their rule over the whole of Yemen. Although they have won control of a large segment of territory, and rule an estimated 70–80% of Yemen’s population, the country remains fragmented. They are not recognized by the UN or internationally as the government of Yemen, and as a result the Houthi leadership prioritizes battlefield gains in Yemen above any success they may achieve in external military operations.

The nation’s internationally recognized government is the Republic of Yemen, whose executive authority is vested in the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) chaired by Rashad Muhammad al‑Alimi. It was formed in April 2022 specifically to unify anti‑Houthi factions and to negotiate a ceasefire and political settlement with the Houthis. The PLC has operated from the southern city of Aden and from exile in the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh.

Its authority has often been contested, specifically by south Yemeni forces. The Southern Transitional Council (STC), backed by the United Arab Emirates, claimed broad control of southern areas in late 2025. Saudi Arabia led a diplomatic effort to bring the STC within the ambit of the national government, and in early 2026, following negotiations in Riyadh, STC leaders announced the group’s dissolution. That declaration was immediately contested by other STC bodies and leaders, and although the south now nominally falls under a single pro‑government, Saudi‑managed framework, the region remains deeply fractured and politically explosive.

As for the Houthis, they have no interest in negotiating a ceasefire or political settlement with the recognized government. Their focus is on defeating government forces and wresting control of the remainder of Yemen from the PLC.

Who are these Houthis? They are Zaydi Shi’ites, a minority group which actively opposed the man who emerged in 1990 as president of the Unified Republic of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh. In 2011 Saleh fell victim to the so-called Arab Spring. In the face of a popular uprising, he reluctantly resigned the presidency and allied himself with the Houthis, his former enemies.

Yemen’s military including its air force remained largely loyal to Saleh. Supported by them, and with weaponry from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Houthi troops overcame government forces in September 2014, and took control of large areas of west Yemen. They finally captured the capital, Sana’a. Saudi Arabia, alarmed at Iran’s expansion into the Arabian peninsula, intervened in March 2015 to beat back the Houthis, and in reaction Iran increased its financial and military support to them.

As a result the Houthi-Iran relationship changed. From Iran assisting the Houthis in their domestic struggle for power, it quickly turned into the Houthis becoming Iran’s proxy in its regional bid for dominance.

With the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza conflict, Iran further boosted the Houthis’ role. They became an essential component of Iran’s so-called “axis of resistance”, attacking Israel by air and sea.

The Bab el-Mandeb Strait – a strategic sea passage at the very foot of the Red Sea – is flanked to the east by Yemen’s Houthi-occupied coastline. Claiming to target vessels directly connected to Israel, the Houthis began attacking shipping passing through the Strait, and continued to do so largely indiscriminately for nearly two years.

Inside their territory the Houthis, under Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, their leader since 2004, have built an intrusive supervisory system (mushrifin) that penetrates ministries, local government and neighborhood structures, using control over salaries, fuel, food and jobs to secure obedience. Economic policy is geared to sustaining this apparatus – capturing revenues from customs, telecommunications and fuel, channeling benefits to loyal elites and militias, and creating new financial centers and patronage networks. Maintaining internal security, keeping local patrons sweet, and financing domestic military operations consume most of the regime’s effort.

Anti‑Israel operations help the leadership convince the population that their privations are the necessary price of “resistance”. It reinforces their internal control, and Yemen remains their primary arena of concern and action.

It is these considerations that motivate the Houthi’s anti-Israel activity. They are willing partners in Iran’s effort to pressure and, in the long term, eliminate Israel, and they vigorously appropriate the Palestinian cause in their rhetoric. It serves their regional image and their public standing. Yet even as they escalate their anti-Israel military involvement, their core calculation remains unchanged. Their main interest is in the consolidation, and eventual expansion, of their grip on Yemen.

This will remain their primary concern. To signal their continued commitment to Iran’s war effort, they will probably persist with their occasional missile and drone attacks against Israel and US-linked targets, though they will surely try to avoid a level of retaliation that could seriously endanger their hold on Yemen.

Published in Eurasia Review, 27 April 2026:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/24042026-the-houthis-join-in-oped/

Lebanon and Syria – deals with Israel are possible

2026-04-15T05:48:00.008+01:00

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 15 April 2026

Israel is technically at war with both Lebanon and Syria – and has been for the past 78 years, ever since the attack in 1948 by the joint Arab armies on the new-born state of Israel. Although Israel concluded peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, none have been negotiated with neighboring Lebanon or Syria. Yet both have recently been seeking to hold discussions with Israel.

On March 9 Lebanon’s president, Joseph Aoun, outlined a four‑point plan aimed at controlling Hezbollah and bringing peace to his country. In addition to calling for a “total ceasefire,” Hezbollah’s disarmament, and international support to strengthen the Lebanese Armed Forces, to universal surprise he proposed direct Lebanese‑Israeli talks under international auspices. And on April 11 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that his cabinet would begin ceasefire and Hezbollah disarmament talks with Lebanon “as soon as possible.” The first round took place in Washington on April 14 and have led to a short-term ceasefire, a harbinger of more permanent arrangements.

As for Syria, it was in July 1949 that the Syrian-Israeli conflict was brought to an end by means of an armistice concluded under UN Security Council auspices. It was not a peace treaty. Following the 1973 Yom Kippur war, in which Syria joined Egypt in a joint attack on Israel, the 1974 Agreement on Disengagement similarly states that it “is not a peace agreement”, and provides only for a ceasefire supervised by the UN.

The position was not affected by the overthrow of the Assad regime in December 2024. Syria and Israel still have no diplomatic relationship and remain formally at war. Potentially Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa – once closely associated with al-Qaeda – is a major threat to Israel’s security. And yet, from the moment he was appointed on January 29, 2025, he has been asserting his intention to normalize relations with Israel.

His first major decision was to suspend the Assad-era constitution. Since then, as interim president, Sharaa seems to have made every effort to distance himself from his al-Qaeda connection, and to present himself as moderate and pragmatic.

On July 12, following conflict between Druze and Bedouin armed groups, the Druze-majority region of Sweida in southern Syria was engulfed in armed sectarian clashes. The violence involved extrajudicial executions, massacres, burning of villages, and looting. Over 1,500 people were killed, and militias affiliated with the new regime in Damascus joined in the attacks.

In reaction Israel honored the promise it had made to the Druze community following an earlier incident. It mounted air strikes, targeting Syrian tanks and an airfield in southwestern Syria. On July 15 Netanyahu and defense minister Israel Katz issued a joint statement: “Israel is committed to preventing harm being inflicted on the Druze in Syria, owing to the deep covenant of blood with our Druze citizens in Israel and their historical and familial link to the Druze in Syria. We are acting to prevent the Syrian regime from harming them...”

Even so, in a statement on July 16, 2025, Sharaa sought conciliation with Israel. The nation did not fear war, he said, but in reaching out to Israel “we have put the interests of the Syrians before chaos and destruction.”

He was as good as his word. Over the past year, Israel and Syria have held a series of low‑profile, US‑mediated negotiations that have gradually taken on a more structured character. The talks have covered security issues and also updating the 1974 disengagement framework in light of Israel’s post‑Assad military push beyond the Golan Heights.

Syria has been represented by its new foreign minister, Asaad al‑Shaibani, while Israel’s interests have been in the hands of strategic affairs minister Ron Dermer.

After at least one early, largely unpublicized encounter in Paris in mid‑2025, Dermer and al‑Shaibani met again in Baku on July 31, 2025, in a high‑level session devoted to the deteriorating situation in southern Syria. Subsequent rounds convened in Paris in late summer 2025, and then on 5–6 January 2026, with US envoy Tom Barrack mediating and French officials acting as hosts. Some media reports also refer to additional working meetings, including at least one five‑hour session in London in September 2025.

On September 17, during a media briefing to reporters in Damascus, Sharaa described a security pact with Israel as a “necessity” for Syria. Such an agreement, he added, would need to respect Syria’s airspace and territorial unity. He said that Syria is seeking “something like” the 1974 Israel-Syria Disengagement Agreement concluded after the Yom Kippur War. It established a formal ceasefire, and separated opposing forces by creating a demilitarized zone and a UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights. He did not categorize such a pact as normalization, since Syria’s position is that the Golan Heights and related issues would first need to be resolved.

Sharaa also mentioned that in July a Syria-Israel deal had been “four to five days” away, but the outbreak of violence in Sweida had derailed it.

The US was deeply involved in the agreement known as the Sweida roadmap, publicly announced on September 16 in Damascus. The negotiations leading to it were one reason for delaying the broader Israel-Syria security pact that was on the table at the time. Now the US is playing a mediating role in the current round of Syria-Israel security discussions.

These on-going Syria–Israel contacts embody real potential to reduce the risk of a wider regional war. They can clarify rules of engagement in southern Syria, and establish channels for crisis management. Even a modest security arrangement could create a platform for more substantive diplomacy over time. The problem is that they are fragile, and could easily crumble.

By contrast, the Lebanon–Israel talks were built on more substantial foundations. Both parties seek to bring Hezbollah under control. There is, moreover, the recent precedent of successful, US‑mediated technical bargaining over maritime boundaries. They focused on a clearly defined, border‑and‑security agenda that officials on both sides see as “solvable”.

In fact, the two tracks are linked. The tangible progress made in the Lebanon-Israel talks provide the cooperative atmosphere necessary for Syrian-Israeli negotiations to succeed. Suddenly a glimmer of hope for a restoration of peace along Israel’s northern borders is appearing. It needs to be fostered assiduously.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled "Are deals with Lebanon and Syria possible for Israel?", 16 April 2026 :
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-892708

Published in Eurasia Review, 17 April 2026:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/17042026-lebanon-and-syria-deals-with-israel-are-possible-oped/

Neutralizing Hezbollah

2026-04-07T20:27:00.007+01:00

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 9 April 2026

The Lebanese government, under its president Joseph Aoun, has been making a determined effort to assert its authority over the rogue Iranian-backed terrorist Hezbollah organization that once operated inside Lebanon as a virtual “state within a state”. Although much weakened by Israel’s military and other more covert operations, Hezbollah is still too powerful to be controlled by the government. Since it entered the war on March 2 in support of Iran, it has been launching an average of 150 rockets a day into northern Israel, some coordinated with Iranian missile attacks.

The Lebanese presidency and cabinet have declared Hezbollah’s cross‑border attacks “unlawful” and not authorized by the state, stressing that no non‑state actor has the right to drag Lebanon into war.

On March 9 Aoun outlined a four‑point plan calling for a “total ceasefire,” Hezbollah’s disarmament, and international support to strengthen the Lebanese Armed Forces, coupled with direct Lebanese‑Israeli talks under international auspices. In an online conference with senior EU officials, Aoun described the plan as a path towards "permanent security and stability arrangements on our borders", but declared it was conditional on a halt to Israeli strikes inside Lebanon.

Perhaps as a sign of the sincerity of his intentions, on March 24 Aoun declared Iran’s ambassador-designate Mohammad Reza Sheibani persona non grata, and gave him five days to leave the country. Lebanon objects to the close connection between Hezbollah and Iran’s hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, accusing the IRGC of “commanding Hezbollah’s operations” in the current conflict.

On March 30 it emerged that Sheibani, backed by Iran and its Hezbollah supporters, had refused to leave. Iran has stated unequivocally that its ambassador to Lebanon would remain in post. A standoff between the Lebanese government, in its efforts to control Hezbollah, and Iran – which regards Lebanon as its colony – has developed. Lebanon has not enforced its own decision – for example by closing the Iranian embassy, or attempting an arrest of Sheibani. In fact the situation has settled into a symbolic but revealing deadlock.

Israel and Lebanon are similarly in a state of frozen animation, and have been for nearly 80 years. The two countries are still technically at war – the war launched on the nascent state of Israel in 1948 by the joint Arab armies. In all that time no peace treaty or armistice has been negotiated between them, and there have been no diplomatic relations or official channels of communication. Any interchanges have been indirect, via the UN, international mediators, and back‑channel contacts. Only UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and subsequent arrangements have provided a formal framework for the cessation of hostilities along the border.

All of which makes Aoun’s recent apparent overture the more unusual. Whether it can lead to direct negotiations is highly unlikely, given the current situation. Israel is establishing a security buffer zone inside southern Lebanon, which it describes as a temporary defense measure rather than a permanent occupation. At the same time it is undertaking extensive airstrikes against Hezbollah infrastructure and fighters, including in Beirut.

Even so, on March 13 the Qatar-funded Caliber news medium reported that Aoun had proposed a one-month truce with Israel, pledging to use the period to achieve the disarmament of Hezbollah. This proposal was communicated to Israel through US Ambassador to Lebanon, Michael Issa, but like so many emanating from the Lebanese government, has simply withered on the vine.

The official Israeli position is that the Lebanese government, in accordance with a number of prior agreements and commitments, is responsible for disarming Hezbollah. If it cannot achieve that, Israeli officials have argued that the war will end only when Hezbollah no longer poses a threat to Israel from Lebanese territory.

In short, Israel has not signaled any readiness to enter political talks with Beirut a long as its relationship with Lebanon is dominated by active hostilities. But the door is not shut fast. Even though Lebanon’s infrastructure is affected by the ongoing military offensive, and civilian deaths and displacements continue to mount, Israel does not describe current operations as a conflict with the Lebanese state, but as self‑defense against Hezbollah.

The political gap between the Lebanese and Israeli governments is wide, but not unbridgeable. From Israel’s perspective Hezbollah is lodged firmly within the Lebanese arena, and it holds the Lebanese state responsible for its disarmament. The Lebanese administration does not disagree, for it is trying to distance the state from Hezbollah’s actions, is openly seeking help to bring the terrorist organization under state control, and has signaled its readiness to negotiate.

On March 31 the EU’s Diplomatic Service issued a statement on behalf of 10 states, including the UK, asserting that the responsibility for the current conflict in Lebanon “lies with Hezbollah,” adding “We strongly condemn Hezbollah’s attacks in support of Iran against Israel, which must cease immediately.” They expressed their “full support to the government and people of Lebanon,” and called for “direct political negotiation between Lebanon and Israel, that can contribute to putting a durable end to this conflict and set the conditions for peaceful regional coexistence.”

There is another factor at play. Lebanon’s next parliamentary elections, originally scheduled for May 2026 but now delayed until 2028, could consolidate Hezbollah’s strength, or signal its decline. Aoun has managed to achieve a breathing space of two years in which to ensure that the state gains the upper hand in its struggle with Hezbollah. It is because he acknowledges that the government is not powerful enough to achieve this without help, that he has floated the idea of direct Lebanese‑Israeli talks under international auspices.

Negotiations, perhaps leading to joint military operations, could eliminate Hezbollah’s constant onslaught on Israel’s northern border, and would justify Israel’s withdrawal from the buffer zone it is establishing in southern Lebanon. If such talks were ever to be arranged, Hezbollah would undoubtedly attempt to disrupt them, so Israel's participation would have to be dependent on firm security guarantees, perhaps underwritten by international enforcement.

Unlikely the possibility of face-to-face talks may seem, but should the potential, however remote, of a collaborative Lebanese-Israeli effort to strike down Hezbollah – with Israel for once in lockstep with international opinion – be rejected out of hand?

Published in the Jerusalem Post on 9 April 2026, and in the Jerusalem post online titled: "Lebanon vs Hezbollah: A standoff between state sovereignty and Iranian influence" on 7 April 2026:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-892224

Kurds: Iran won’t fall without a ground offensive

2026-03-31T05:52:00.005+01:00

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 31 March 2026

Putting to one side, just for the moment, President Donald Trump’s talk of highly promising ceasefire negotiations involving an unnamed senior Iranian leader, media outlets report that some 50,000 US troops are already in the Middle East, with the Pentagon bringing in a further 5,000 Marines, and some 2,000 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division, some of whom have already sailed or are being flown in. A further surge of 10,000 ground troops is under consideration.

On March 19 the UK’s Daily Telegraph quoted the leader of one of the main Kurdish armed groups, Babasheikh Hosseini, saying that the Iranian regime will not fall without a ground offensive which must involve Kurdish forces.

“If we are not on this battlefield,” he said, “the end of the regime will either not occur, or be delayed by a lot.”

Hosseini is the general secretary of the Khabat Organization of Iranian Kurdistan, a long‑standing Iranian Kurdish opposition party, based in exile in Iraqi Kurdistan. On February 22 Khabat became one of five founding members of a new “Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan” (CPFIK). A number of think tanks and commentators now adjudge the CPFIK a significant new factor in the Iranian opposition. The coalition’s objectives include overthrowing the Islamic Republic and creating a democratic Kurdish entity in Iranian Kurdistan, on the lines of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq.

In practice these twin aims are only partly viable. The coalition can certainly coordinate opposition and support protest, but its most ambitious goals – toppling the Islamic Republic and securing Kurdish self-determination – could be achieved only as part of some larger initiative, and with substantial military support.

There is, of course, a long and distinguished history of close military collaboration between the US and Kurdish fighters. Together they defeated ISIS both in Iraq and in Syria.

In Iraq, Peshmerga forces were key in the 2017 defeat of ISIS. In Syria the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), with its major Kurdish element, became the main US-backed ground partner in 2015. The territorial defeat of ISIS in Syria was announced in March 2019.

The CPFIK has unified five major Kurdish parties after years of internal fragmentation. A firm and clearly defined Kurdish stance is a strength in a situation where the various Iranian opposition entities are fragmented. Kurdish unity is an example of disciplined coordination that other opposition elements could emulate.

As the price for their cooperation, the Kurds require support for Kurdish autonomy within a restructured Iran. Cooperation will be fragile if opposition figures regard Kurdish demands as a separatist threat. It would be politic to accept them as part of a post-regime settlement.

A major player on the scene is Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late Shah, who has been living in exile since leaving Iran in 1979 in the wake of the Islamic Revolution.

In 2013 he launched an umbrella movement – the Iran National Council – and has since worked hard attempting to unite monarchists, secular democrats, and defectors around a post-Islamic Republic transition.

Presenting himself as a figure recognized and respected by the vast majority of the Iranian people, Pahlavi is offering to lead the nation into a new, post-revolutionary future. He specifically does not seek a restoration of the monarchy above any other form of constitutional democracy, but advocates a referendum of the Iranian people through which they would select the form of constitution they prefer.

As an instrument for regime change, however, Pahlavi’s network is not by itself a realistic mechanism for toppling the Islamic Republic. His strongest asset is symbolic: he is in his very person a link to Iran’s past – and nostalgia for the pre-revolutionary past has been a feature in the vast popular demonstrations in recent years. Pahlavi could serve as a rallying point and a unifying force holding disparate opposition forces together.

There is a snag. At the moment Pahlavi’s published roadmap and public messaging do not accord with Kurdish aspirations. He promises equal individual rights and non‑discrimination for Kurds and other minorities, but stops short of endorsing a federal “Iranian Kurdistan” on the Iraqi model. In fact he stresses territorial integrity over any ethnically defined region with self‑rule. Moreover he has urged Kurds and other minorities not to use the present conflict “to press for separation”. But Kurdish alliance statements in 2026 explicitly reaffirm Kurdish rights and federal‑style autonomy “within a unified Iran.” A failure to reach some form of compromise could rule out a collaboration between the Pahlavi organization and the CPFIK – and that means the formidable Kurdish fighting force.

How much might that matter? Pahlavi has never received a positive endorsement from US President Donald Trump. The furthest Trump would go is to say that he would be fine with Pahlavi if Iranians themselves accepted him, but on March 3 Trump is reported as saying: “It seems to me that somebody from within maybe would be more appropriate.” On March 22 he said the US had held talks with a “top person” in Iran and had identified “major points of agreement”. On March 23 he told reporters that Washington was in contact with the “right people” in Iran and that the US and Iran were “in negotiations right now.”

Tehran has consistently denied that talks were in progress.

America’s natural allies on the Iranian scene are clearly the Kurds, and in particular the formidable Kurdish Peshmerga fighting force. It had been thought that Trump had more or less ruled out US boots on Iranian soil, but the facts seem to point to a build-up of American forces in the region.

Meanwhile accounts have appeared in the media of limited desertions and refusals to obey orders by both the Iranian police and the regular army. These reports, if accurate, could be taken as an indication that, given large-scale anti-government demonstrations, a neutralized IRGC, or some form of direct attack, defections to the popular cause from within both forces is not out of the question.

A military defeat of the Iranian regime backed by popular support is not, perhaps, entirely beyond the bounds of possibility.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Iranian regime faces pressure as Kurds, US strengthen cooperation", 31 March 2026:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-891658

How Iran aims to win the war

2026-03-23T22:14:00.005+00:00

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 24 March 2026

The success or failure of the US-Israeli military operation in Iran hangs in the balance. It is very largely dependent upon how "success" is finally adjudged.

Since February 28 the Iranian regime has sustained a massive armed offensive, and as a result its resources and its infrastructure have been substantially depleted. US President Donald Trump has on several occasions detailed the vast losses Iran has incurred, and hinted that he is on the verge of declaring victory. At other times he has indicated that he has considerably more in reserve by way of military power, including the possible use of American troops, to be used in loosening Iran’s grip on international shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, and ensuring the unconditional surrender of the regime.

Trump has been criticized for the apparent inconsistency of his various statements, which to some seem ill considered. They are, however, just as likely to be a deliberate strategy aimed at keeping the enemy, and perhaps the world at large, guessing as to his calculated and detailed plans for the end-game.

Meanwhile Iran, far from seeking as early an end to the war as possible – on the face of it the obvious course to follow – is continuing to attack states that host Western military bases and to disrupt international shipping and thus the global oil market. On March 15 foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran had “never asked for a ceasefire”.

In fact the regime seems to be conducting what Eric Mandel, writing in the Jerusalem Post on March 16, calls “a war of attrition”. The loss of its current leadership through targeted assassination is unlikely to affect this survival strategy.

The March issue of Foreign Affairs carries an article by Robert Pape, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, entitled: “Why Escalation Favors Iran”.

In it Pape explains why Iran, despite its weaker conventional military power, paradoxically benefits from broadening and extending the current conflict. The core of his argument is that Iran is pursuing a strategy he calls “horizontal escalation” — namely, expanding the scope, geography, and duration of the conflict, in order to shift it from direct military contest toward political endurance and strategic costs.

Pape contends that Iran knows it cannot defeat a US-Israel alliance in a direct military confrontation. Instead, it is changing the nature of the conflict. By using regional proxies, attacking economic targets and disrupting international commerce, Iran can vastly increase the political and economic costs borne by its stronger adversaries and their allies.

The strategy draws on historic precedents. One example is the Vietnam war. The North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces out-maneuvered the US by escalating the war “horizontally” into the towns and cities in the south. The US won every battle over 11 bloody years, but lost the war.

Another is the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and America’s in 2001. Both operations ended as classic “wars of attrition”, where the insurgent side wore down the occupier over time until domestic political support and strategic patience eroded.

The Soviets entered Afghanistan expecting a short stabilization mission, but were drawn into a decade-long counter-insurgency that Gorbachev later called a “bleeding wound,” with mounting casualties, economic strain, and political embarrassment. The mujahideen, backed by Pakistan, the US, and others, used sanctuary, terrain, and time to ensure the conflict was prolonged and costly, rather than decisive.

The later US campaign similarly morphed into an open-ended effort against an adaptive insurgency – in this case the Taliban and its allies – that aimed to outlast Western domestic will and unity, rather than to defeat US forces tactically in set-piece battles.

Finally both the Soviets and the US acknowledged defeat and withdrew their forces.

According to Pape, Iran’s current actions – rapid retaliatory strikes, disruption of regional infrastructure, and resilience even after leadership losses – are meant to demonstrate to their opponents and to the world in general that the regime can sustain a long conflict.

This strategy transforms the confrontation into a test of political will rather than battlefield superiority, a test the Iranian regime may believe it is capable of winning. The longer it drags on, the more it works in Iran’s favor. It disrupts energy markets, strains host-country tolerance for US bases, and erodes domestic and allied political support for an open-ended campaign. Unless Washington adjusts its strategy to account for these dynamics, Pape warns, the US and Israel may have “bitten off more than they can chew” and risk losing control of the war they initiated.

What is the slowly accumulating danger for the US-Israel alliance? By broadening and prolonging the conflict, Iran could impose mounting costs and heavy political pressure on the alliance, and gradually wrest control of the war’s trajectory from its stronger opponents. In short, continued escalation risks putting the US and Israel into a strategic trap.

For example, the longer the conflict continues, the harder it becomes for rulers in the Gulf – and particularly Abraham Accord partners – to sustain their relationship with Israel without sacrificing legitimacy at home.

A protracted war would also reshape American politics. Sizable elements of Trump’s political coalition have been wary of Middle Eastern entanglements, and have accused the administration of simply following Israel’s lead. The longer US military operations continue, the greater the danger of fractures widening within Trump’s political supportive base – as exemplified by the resignation on May 17 of Joe Kent, Director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

Transatlantic strains could also follow. The US could be in difficulties if, faced with the dangers of a prolonged and economically disastrous war, European states decided to limit their support or constrain the use of their territory. US strategists would also obviously be factoring into their calculations the danger of the conflict escalating beyond the confines of the Middle East.

Out of this complex military, political and economic maelstrom, there is a real danger that the US-Israel alliance could end by plucking defeat from the jaws of victory. It would be a hollow victory indeed if, in the final analysis, the revolutionary regime remained in power in Iran. It has to be swept away.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Political, economic pressures mount as US-Israel war with Iran continues", 24 March 2026:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-890897

Published in Eurasia Review, 27 March 2026:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/27032026-how-iran-aims-to-win-the-war-oped/

Revolutionary Iran must be toppled

2026-03-16T18:02:00.002+00:00

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 17 March 2026

On March 8 Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Ali Khamenei who was killed in a targeted strike on February 28, was announced as Iran’s new Supreme Leader. He has not been seen in public from that day to this, and the speculation is he may have been badly wounded in that strike. His first address to the people was read for him by a TV news anchor.

If US President Donald Trump had been hoping that Iran’s new leader would be open to negotiate a better future for its people, he has been sadly disappointed. Mojtaba Khamenei is very much his father’s son. He is generally viewed as hardline and anti-West politically, and strongly aligned with the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps).

In short the regime’s elite has done its best to reconstitute itself and proceed on its quest to achieve the basic purposes of the Islamic revolution that, half a century ago, swept away Iran’s Pahlavi dynasty. Ever since, most world leaders have been unable, or perhaps unwilling, to acknowledge the underlying motivation of its instigator, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. They have also refused to accept that the same objectives have driven the regime ever since.

In his writings before the revolution, and in his speeches after, Khomeini affirmed repeatedly that the foundation stone of his philosophy was to impose Shiite Islam on the whole world by destroying Western-style democracy and its way of life. To achieve this aim, he identified Israel and the United States (and also, at one time, Soviet Russia) as his prime targets.

“We wish to cause the corrupt roots of Zionism, Capitalism and Communism to wither throughout the world,” said Khomeini. “We wish, as does God almighty, to destroy the systems which are based on these three foundations, and to promote the Islamic order of the Prophet.”

By this he meant his strict Shiite interpretation of Islam, for elsewhere he had declared that the holy city of Mecca, situated in the heart of Sunni Saudi Arabia, was in the hands of “a band of heretics”.

Ever since 1979 the world could have recognized, if it had had a mind to, that the Iranian regime has been engaged in a focused pursuit of these related objectives – the destruction of democracy and the global imposition of Shiite Islam – quite impervious to any other considerations. Instead, wishful thinking has governed the approach to Iran of many of the world’s leaders.

The administration of then US President Joe Biden maintained the tradition, inherited from his years as vice-president to Barack Obama, of seeking an accommodation with the regime.

A clear-eyed look at the facts would have shown that the Iranian regime did not intend to become one of the comity of civilized nations. To do so would have negated the revolution’s fundamental purposes, to which the ayatollahs remained unshakably committed.

In the words of Khomeini, its founder: “We shall export our revolution to the whole world. Until the cry 'There is no God but Allah' resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle.”

His successor, the recently deceased Khamenei, was a devout disciple. Like Khomeini, he considered the revolutionary objectives so supremely desirable – even, perhaps, divinely approved – that any means were justified in furthering them, regardless of the human or political consequences. Accordingly both leaders authorized a continuous succession of terrorist operations, most carried out by proxies to maintain the fiction of Iranian deniability.

Immediately following the revolution Iranian militants seized the US embassy in Tehran and held more than 50 people hostage for 444 days. This was followed in 1983 by the bombing of the US embassy in Beirut, resulting in 63 deaths. Later that same year Hezbollah bombed the US Marine Barracks in Beirut resulting in the deaths of 241 US and 58 French troops.

Bombing campaigns and hostage taking continued in the Middle East and Europe during the 1980s, and in the early 1990s Iran-inspired terror operations expanded to South America. In 1992 Hezbollah bombed the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires causing 29 deaths, following this two years later by bombing the city’s AMIA Jewish Community Center, which killed some 85 people. Meanwhile Iran continued to supply funding, weapons, training, and operational guidance to sustain continuous Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthi and militia attacks against Israel, Iraq, Syria, and Gulf states.

As Hamas’s primary sponsor, the Iranian regime was undoubtedly complicit in its bloodthirsty attack into Israel on October 7, 2023.

What explains the palpable failure by most of the world’s leaders to perceive what was plainly discernible? The mistake was the same as the world made in the case of Adolf Hitler. Few who read his Mein Kampf, first published in 1925, thought he meant what he said.

But the philosophy underlying Hitler’s political beliefs was there, in black and white, for years before he was in a position to implement it. If politicians, or opinion formers, had taken it seriously, his rise to supreme power could have been thwarted. He could have been prevented from maneuvering his way into becoming Germany’s Chancellor in 1933.

In the same way not enough scholars and political leaders bothered to look into the philosophy underlying Iran’s 1979 revolutionary leader, Khomeini, or to take seriously the burning religious conviction that motivated him, and subsequently the policies of the Islamic Republic. The regime’s unceasing effort to acquire a nuclear arsenal was integral to its underlying purpose. Whatever other strategic or political advantages nuclear arms might confer, it was only as a nuclear power that Iran could achieve its basic aim of eliminating Israel and confronting the Great Satan, America.

If the Iranian regime is permitted to remodel itself under a new Supreme Leader, no amount of negotiation will dislodge it from its fundamental revolutionary purpose, as first propounded by Ayatollah Khomeini. Nothing will induce it to reject the deluded vision of an Israel-free Middle East and an entire world subject to Shiite Sharia law. That is why the future peace of the Middle East depends on Iran’s governing structure crumbling in the coming weeks under the sustained US-Israel aerial bombardment. Trump has demanded “unconditional surrender”. He cannot declare total victory while Iran remains a theocratic dictatorship under the ayatollahs, led by a Khamenei.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Mojtaba Khamenei’s rise means Iran’s revolution is far from over," 17 March 2026:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-890086

Published in Eurasia Review, 31 March 2026

https://www.eurasiareview.com/20032026-revolutionary-iran-must-be-toppled-oped/