The joint statement issued on February 6 following the four-day visit by the Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan to China has been an exceptional gesture by Beijing underscoring the highest importance attached to that country as a regional ally. Beijing feels the need to underscore that not only does it back the government in Islamabad to the hilt but is determined to boost the ties, especially by boosting the flagship of the Belt and Road Initiative known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

Aside its overt emphasis on the launch of the CPEC’s Phase 2, the two highlights of the joint statement are: one, the affirmation that ’stronger’ defence and security cooperation will be ‘an important factor of peace and stability in the region,’ and, two, the joint initiative to take up with the Taliban government the holding of the China-Pakistan-Afghanistan Trilateral Foreign Ministers’ Dialogue as well as the ‘extension of CPEC to Afghanistan.’

New trends have appeared in regional security during the past 6-month period since the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan last August, which are highly consequential for regional politics. For a start, all evidence suggests that various terrorist groups continue to operate in Afghanistan. And groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir or the Islamic State affiliates have a long history of working as the West’s geopolitical tool.

The acute humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan following the abrupt ending of western assistance in August and the U.S. vengeful decision to freeze the country’s funds abroad are being turned around as pressure points by Washington to engage with the Taliban Government with a view to manipulate its attitudes and policies. With the departure of U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad, the CIA is in direct control of Washington’s dealings with the Taliban.

The Oslo talks (January 23-25) between the Taliban and the U.S. has been a turning point. Notably, last week, the U.S. Treasury Department has unilaterally ‘tweaked’ the sanctions regime against the Haqqani Network. Funds can now be transferred to Afghanistan by international banks, and aid agencies are allowed to work with the Haqqanis. Alongside, President Biden has designated Qatar as a ‘major non-NATO ally’ even as direct flights commenced last week between Kabul and Doha (where CIA operatives dealing with Afghan affairs are based), and, furthermore, Qatar will now be operating the Afghan airports and controlling that country’s air space. Taken together, Washington is rapidly putting in place the infrastructure for conducting its operations in Afghanistan pending diplomatic recognition and the establishment of physical presence.

Meanwhile, the climate of Pakistan’s relations with the Taliban government has deteriorated. A surge of cross-border violence culminated last week in brazen attacks on Pakistani military. The picture remains hazy. Intriguing questions arise as to the culpability.

The internal tensions within the Taliban are no big secret. It is only to be expected that at a time when the group is trying to gain international legitimacy and tackle domestic crisis, internal tensions get accentuated, as interest groups competing for positions and privileges pull in different directions. Suffice to say, the Taliban is more vulnerable today than ever to infiltration and manipulation by the western intelligence.

Recently, Barnett Rubin, former State Department official and expert on Afghanistan who was a key aide to late Richard Holbrooke, took a historical perspective when he said, “The Taliban are the most unified organisation in Afghanistan. There has never been a significant split in the organisation. There are many differences and rivalries that are seized on by their opponents as evidence that the Taliban are divided, but they have never been divided in practice. The CIA spent $1 bn trying to split the Taliban and failed.”

That was time past. Time present may hold surprises. What is apparent is that while the Taliban government is being seen by the world community as the monarch of all it surveys in Afghanistan, Washington is singling out the Haqqani Network as its interlocutor. The folklore used to be that the Haqqanis were the blue-eyed boys of Pakistan. Equally, they became synonymous with brutal acts of terrorism. That said, however, the Haqqanis also have another side to their bio-profile.

Lest it gets forgotten, the great patriarch Jalaluddin Haqqani’s rift with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the subsequent split with Hizb-i-Islami in 1979 was not due to the acceptance or rejection of radicalism but reflected regional geography and their respective tribal origins. The Haqqanis belong to the Zadran Pashtun tribe, a branch of the Kalani tribal confederacy inhabiting southeastern Afghanistan (Khost, Paktia and Paktika provinces) and parts of Pakistan’s Waziristan. That is what distinguishes the Haqqanis in the top rungs of the Taliban leadership in Kabul. Mullah Hasan Akhund, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, Mullah Mohammed Yaqoob, etc. are largely drawn from the Abdali (Durrani) confederacy of the dominant Pashtun tribes.

True, the Taliban movement managed to put up a show of unity, but that was the period of the jihad against foreign occupation when clan and tribal identity got submerged and the friendship networks, or andiwali (Pashto for camaraderie) played an important cementing role. But even then, interestingly, the Haqqani Network had enjoyed battlefield autonomy while remaining politically subservient to the Quetta Shura.

Today, two factors become particularly important. First, no one knows whether the Taliban supremo Amir Hibatullah Akhundzada is still alive or not. There is a leadership vacuum. Second, since 2013-2014, Pakistan’s control of the Taliban had been progressively weakening following the assassination of several senior Taliban figures in Quetta. Now, these two factors combined together, there is no one with power or authority who can rein in the Taliban factions from going overboard. In all likelihood, Pakistan is helplessly watching. The cross-border tensions could well be a manifestation of this epochal transition in the Taliban’s tumultuous history.

Then, there is an interesting detail that has great relevance today. The Haqqanis and the CIA go back a long way. The Haqqani Network was the only Mujahideen group that then Pakistani President Zia-ul-Haq permitted the CIA to have direct dealings during the 1980s jihad. How far that had anything to do with the Haqqanis’ devotion to ‘global jihad’ is a moot point today. The point is, it was in the safe hands of the Haqqanis that the CIA entrusted Osama bin Laden’s life and security during the 1980s jihad.

Is it coincidental that the U.S. has ‘tweaked’ the sanctions against the Haqqanis unilaterally so soon after the defeat in Afghanistan so as to revive their direct line of communication with them?

The regional states cannot but be worried. Simply put, the spectre that is haunting the region is the U.S.’ return to Afghanistan to finesse a new geopolitical tool for influencing regional politics in a wide arc of countries — Central Asian states, China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan. The China-Pakistan joint statement issued in Beijing on Sunday is a forceful signal from Beijing against any such attempt to use Afghan soil as a springboard to destabilise the region. But it is going to be an uphill struggle unless the attempt is nipped in the bud.

It is not without reason that the Chinese President Xi Jinping told his Kazakh counterpart Kassym-Jomart Tokayev at their meeting in Beijing on Saturday that ‘The dimension of China-Kazakhstan relations has gone beyond the bilateral scope and is of great significance to regional and even world peace and stability.’ The very next day, at the meeting with Imran Khan, President Xi emphasised that ‘as the world finds itself in a period of turbulence and transformation, China-Pakistan relations have gained greater strategic significance.’

A seriously ill Palestinian teenage refugee boy, Amal Nakhleh, has brought Israel’s administrative detention system to the news headlines. Nakhleh, who is 17 years old and who suffers from a serious medical condition and who underwent an operation to remove a tumour from his ribcage prior to his detention by Israeli forces, has been held without charges in administrative detention since January 2021, and his latest extension was yet lengthened again this January until May 2022.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said in a statement that the Israeli authorities informed the parents that their son’s detention is considered a “confidential administrative case.” His case, according to the legal team, “is one of the most prolonged cases of administrative detention of a child that they have come across.”

Due to Nakhleh’s health condition, myasthenia gravis, which is a neurological condition requiring specialised medical care, the international community was perhaps particularly vocal in taking up the call for his release. However, the humanitarian grounds in this particular case should not overshadow the fact that administrative detention is a violation of international law.

Earlier in January, over 500 Palestinians incarcerated under administrative detention orders embarked on a collective protest boycotting their court hearings, noting that Israel is expanding its policy to also target women, children and the elderly.

The protest coincided with the deterioration of 40 year old Palestinian prisoner Hisham Abu Hawwash’s health, who was on his 141^st day of hunger strike to draw attention to his administrative detention order. Abu Hawwash is now set to be released in February.

Another lull would have happened within the international community had not Nakhleh’s case been made prominent. But the practice itself, which is employed by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) and the Shin Bet as a coercive measure against Palestinians, needs to be brought to international attention as an international law violations. Anything less than full attention on the fact that Israel is breaking international law will not suffice.

Israel has maintained its colonisation policies based upon a purported state of exception which the international community has assimilated to. Administrative detention, which is directly related to incarceration matters, is one more policy which Israel justifies, based on its security narrative. By refusing to impart information regarding the arrests, as well as refusing a fair trial, Palestinians are completely prevented from accessing justice and forced to resort to extreme measures merely to bring attention to their plight.

The detainees who do manage media attention are either hunger strikers, or else suffering from serious health issues, which means that the majority of Palestinians in administrative detention remain in the background, their presence merely compiled in statistical data. With attention focused temporarily on the cases that capture mainstream media attention, political leaders, diplomats and human rights organisations are casting the rest of administrative detainees in perpetual oblivion, for once an immediate objective is reached, in this case the campaign for Nakhleh’s release, administrative detention is no longer a priority for the international community.

The absence of a persistent strategy to counter Israel’s human rights violations and to hold the settler colonial state accountable is of detriment to the Palestinian people, who remain shackled to humanitarian agendas. Israel’s administrative detention policy is political, just as its colonial expansion is political, yet the international community insist on treating the consequences from a paradigm of safety in terms of politics, and deprivation in terms of need.

Pointing out the need to release individual Palestinians from administrative detention does not even constitute a critique of Israel’s violence towards Palestinians. Rather, the tactic employs the usual process of chastising Israel and creating a spectacle out of release, knowing full well that the Israeli government’s decisions are political strategy designed to oppress.

In recent weeks, Arab countries, as well as Iran and Turkey have all been working out how they can move forward and get along with each other, all due to “sleepy Joe” Biden being asleep at the wheel. Where’s all this heading?

Barely a year in office and what has Joe Biden done in the Middle East? Could it be an after dinner game, like what Europhiles in Brussels play (‘Name five famous Belgians’)? Name five decisions Biden has made in the Middle East?

U.S. presidents can be bold. And they can be wrong. But the worst type are those who are neither bold nor decisive in anything they do. Joe Biden, under the microscope, appears to be a U.S. president asleep at the wheel on so many domestic issues but when we look at the Middle East, it’s almost as though he’s in a coma. And it’s starting to affect how the region operates and how its countries interact with one another.

During Trump’s early days in office, he made a point of doing nothing on the international circuit until the Saudis were ready to accept him as his first official international trip to mark his presidency. The background to this was a strong relationship between Jared Kuchner and Mohamed Bin Salman – the latter installed as Crown Prince by the Trump administration on the condition that a recognition was made of Israel. But the Saudis wanted more. One of the reasons why it took six whole months before Trump made it to Riyadh and ingratiated himself with the cultural histrionics of sword dancing and looking at best ridiculous, was that a second dirty deal was being carved about how the White House would go through with a particularly mendacious ruse against Qatar – which transpired quickly as a blockade on the tiny energy rich state and statements from Trump condemning them for supporting terrorism. In fact, there was even a plan on the table crafted by a middleman working for Blackwater chief Erik Prince, to draw Trump into a plan which would involve a private army overthrowing the Royal Family in Qatar.

The last part of this didn’t transpire as Trump smelled a rat and got nervous at the last moment and the middleman involved, George Nader, soon found himself caught in a CIA trap which landed him in prison and his blueprint for the Qatar invasion scrapped, as part of the Mueller investigation.

For the Saudis, it was nirvana since the day Trump arrived and danced to their tune, even though Kushner was soon to try and capitalize on the situation to harangue the Qataris to invest in his failed New York City real estate endeavours. For MbS in particular nothing could go wrong and the years of fretting over the Obama years seemed well behind them. Finally a U.S. president who is going to show us some respect and give us a much better deal. Indeed, it was rarely pointed out by journalists in the U.S. that the so called amazing arms deal that Trump claimed to have pulled off, was in fact, as Trump likes to put it himself “fake news”. Not only was the figure grossly inflated but it was also not explained to the press that the terms of payment were on the “never never” which gave the Saudis the flexibility to reduce the speed of the purchases and even pull out.

And then everything changed with the Khashoggi murder for Trump and MbS. The Saudi Crown prince was seriously underwhelmed by the Trump response which was barely supportive by any stretch of the imagination.

At this point, relations between Washington and KSA began to sour and in so many ways, what we are witnessing today are rooted here.

Joe Biden came into office huffing and puffing about the Saudis and the Khashoggi murder and how the Saudis would have to pay a price for what was conveniently dubbed a hideous human rights abuse against almost a U.S. citizen.

But the reality is that Biden hasn’t done anything of the sort. In fact, in many ways he has shown that all the ranting and remonstrating about Khashoggi was actually just fake news being created to hit the Trump administration. What we see now is a weak, ineffective and, at times, moronic U.S. president who can barely even remember his own tepid rhetoric on Saudi Arabia and their horrendous, barbarous attacks on Yemenis, even to this day. Just recently, he found himself on the back legs on a deal he signed off to allow more arms sales to the Saudis, despite Congress resisting the deal.

Given the confusion and the dead-dead slow negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, the Saudis are now lost and confused. They can’t take Biden seriously and are almost certainly betting on him not being around for a second term. Bearing in mind that they couldn’t take Trump seriously to help them in their hour of need, amidst talk to possible plots to overthrow MbS, it is hardly surprising that they think of Biden as a fool, who is not worth the time of day.

And so, the recent news that the Kingdom has turned to China to help it develop ballistic missiles really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone given the backdrop of the regime’s worries both domestically and regionally. There have been plenty of warning signs since Khashoggi that the Saudis were shopping around and warming to both China and the Russians as the deal that they had struck with the Americans was very expensive and brought little advantages politically. With China as a partner now, there is leverage towards Iran which, in itself, actually works as a lightning rod to defuse tensions rather than exacerbate them. In fact, relations in the region are generally improving between old rivalries on a grand scale due to Biden’s dithering, as we have just seen a new page turned with Turkey which now is beefing up relations with its old foes in the region like the UAE and Egypt. The fact that Abu Dhabi orchestrated the attempted coup d’etat against Erdogan in 2016 and earlier in 2013 masterminded the successful overthrow of Muslim Brotherhood icon Morsi in Egypt shows security concerns, COVID, domestic woes, Iran’s growth are enough to smash heads together and work out how enemies can seek a workable peace with one another.

Who knows where this all heading, but a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran is not as far fetched as it sounds. Who needs the Americans?

The reality is that the West can no longer carry off the moral high ground when dishing out the human rights tutelage. London, Paris and Washington are addicted to Saudi arms deals and have exposed woke U.S. media as entirely fake.

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohamed bin Salman (or simply MbS to many) is an opaque figure who we can say at least is hugely misunderstood by most, certainly western media. In recent weeks, the news that a Saudi official who was allegedly the mastermind behind the murder of Jamal Khashoggi was arrested and detained briefly by the French, sparked more media chaff about the affair allowing America’s woke media to peddle the worn narrative about MbS being the one who signed the murder off.

Yet the French Connection to the MbS story is interesting as it was Macron who, one could argue, has turned a page for U.S. media and brought MbS in from the cold. It was actually the French president who recently reached out to the Saudis to boost France’s trade with the kingdom as few if any in the West now can keep up the boycott of Saudi Arabia. The French, the British and more importantly the Americans all need the Saudis’ money although three years after the Khashoggi murder the news that Joe Biden is throwing his weight behind 650 million dollar air-to-air missile deal, despite it receiving some resistance in the Senate over concerns for the Saudi role in Yemen, should surprise us – given that Biden was so bellicose about hitting the Saudi regime (and in particular MbS) hard, after only a few days in the Oval office.

Did the French move spur Biden to change his tact and win some points from the U.S. army lobby? Possibly. But if those from the woke camp in America who so vociferously campaigned and whaled at every given media moment about the death of the Saudi commentator are as disingenuous as Biden, then we should be surprised that it took three years for the Saudi crown prince to get the whitewashing which he has finally been awarded by Washington.

We now see, in the bare light, what all that fake hullabaloo was really all about: bashing Trump. If we look, in particular at CNN and the Washington Post (the latter who wheeled out a black editor who claimed to be a dear friend of Khashoggi and turned on the tears when the cameras started to roll), it is clear that the campaign was really only about using the murder as a tool to generate media spin against Trump who had made the Saudis his closest allies in the region (bar the Israelis) and at the time of the murder was helping them with a ruse to destroy Qatar. Trump was blind-sided by the murder. Totally caught off guard and the Washington Post didn’t miss a heartbeat in treating Khashoggi practically like a U.S. citizen who had been murdered for carrying out his American apple pie beliefs of liberty and freedom of expression. The truth about Khashoggi, was in fact a million miles from what the Post’s Opinion section crafted in a baptism of sensational storytelling with perhaps the biggest lie being how the journal managed to not mention its own links – let alone Khashoggi’s – with Qatar, as just one example.

But where is the call centre opprobrium now, just days after Biden has decided, in fact, that it’s fine to sell the Saudi’s air-to-air missiles? Why didn’t the French detain Khaled Aedh al-Otaibi, the Saudi official believed to be at the very centre of the murder and who could shed light on two key questions, namely where the body is and whether it was MbS who issued the order or not. The fact that al-Otaibi was detained was due to his name being on an Interpol blacklist, which, in itself is part of relations between the Saudis and Turkey reaching an all-time low when the murder occurred (it was Turkey who signed off the arrest warrant). But his release is an indication that the West has decided to move on from its hypocritical campaign against MbS and instead go back to selling his regime arms. Even Turkey is trying its best now to patch up its differences with the Saudis and move on. MbS himself has won an important battle both at home and abroad and has edged closer to attaining the foreign investment colossus which he needs to modernize the kingdom and consider a second IPO of the stateowned oil facility. Expect soon photos in the New York Times of him seating with world leaders and talking green energy and a cooling off for the spat with Lebanon (to give a ‘cadeaux’ to Macron and make him feel like a player in the region).

But the lesson to Middle Eastern despots in the region is clear. If you want to kidnap or murder your own dissidents who are residing in the West, don’t risk doing the job yourself with your own third-rate security services, who are almost certain to make a dog’s breakfast of the job. Much better to ask Mossad or Mi6 to do the job for you who will be more professional, leave no forensic or digital footprint and frame your adversaries into the bargain.

Yet another non-binding UN General Assembly has passed, granting Palestinians permanent sovereignty over their natural resources, even as Israel has absolute dominion over their territory. The draft resolution, titled “Permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and of the Arab population in the occupied Syrian Golan over their natural resources,” is a perfect example of how the UN glosses over Israel’s colonial violence by refusing to take action, preferring to enact non-binding resolutions which do nothing to protect the Palestinian people’s political rights and their territory.

The resolution demands Israel ceases its exploitation and theft of Palestinian land, while noting all other Israeli violations on Palestinian territory, such as the Apartheid Wall, settlement expansion, destruction of Palestinian infrastructure, as well as the impact of Israel weapons in Gaza. With the passing of such a detailed resolution, it would stand to reason that the UN takes measures against Israel’s colonial violence, rather than call upon Israel to halt its damage. The latter is a futile request, and the UN knows Israel will not abide by the non-binding resolution, in which case it is pertinent to ask why the international institution keeps score of each violation only to mete out some symbolic recognition of Palestinian rights which has so far failed to translate into political value for the Palestinian people.

Palestine’s Permanent Observer to the UN Riyad Mansour described the resolution as confirming the international community supporting full rights for Palestinians. Similarly the Palestinian Authority’s Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki declared that the resolution affirmed Palestinian people’s rights over their territory and called upon the UN to implement international resolutions. Which is where Palestine, as usual, will hit a dead end. The UN’s complicity in Israel’s colonial expansion is the primary reason why non-binding resolutions have taken the place of political resolution for Palestinians.

Does the UN need reminding of how it failed Palestinians since the passing of the 1947 Partition Plan? Or of how its defence of Israel’s security narrative directly ties in to the Palestinian people’s experience of loss, to the point that non-binding resolutions are necessary to remind the world that Palestinians have political rights? Only the periodic reminders mean nothing if the UN refuses to face Israel’s war crimes and international law violations.

Unfortunately, the PA has long supported this disastrous status quo, in which the gap between non-binding resolutions and Israel’s expansion is becoming irreconcilable.

EU diplomats recently visited occupied East Jerusalem, in a visit organised by the Israeli non-governmental organization Ir Amin. The NGO explained the consequences of Israel’s settlement expansion, including forced displacement and the rupture between Palestinian villages and Jerusalem, which is Israel’s next aim.

Yet, at an international level, Israel’s violations are considered separately, with barely ever a connection between one violation and its precedents. If the UN was truly against human rights violations, it would put its research to good use, as well as consistently draw attention to the fact that the earlier colonization process is ongoing.

The PA is also guilty of the same process, preferring to focus on each violation separately rather than take into account how Israel’s actions are collectively contributing to Palestine’s territorial loss.

While shedding light on the cumulative effect of Israel’s violations, the recent UNGA non-binding draft resolution holds no sway over international chastisement of Israel, let alone enforcing punitive measures. Israel’s impunity has been crafted by the UN, in a parallel manner to how the UN facilitated Palestine’s territorial loss. The resolution is no cause to celebrate; rather it is an affirmation of how the international community’s complicity resulted in these belated affirmations that do nothing to reinstate the Palestinian people’s political rights.

Just how “special” is the so-called special relationship between oil-rich Gulf Arab states and Washington? One could argue, since Joe Biden became President, that relations have hit an all time low with many looking to broker better relations with Russia, China and even Iran. Royal elites in the GCC club know that in the event of a new Arab Spring sweeping across the region, that they cannot rely on Biden for any support whatsoever to cling onto power and so have taken an entirely new look at their foes and are asking themselves “are these people really our enemies?”

This partly explains why the shift in policy to welcoming Assad back into the fold, who will no doubt soon be a fully accepted member of the Arab League. And it also justifies why, since Biden took office, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are more open than ever before towards developing relations with Russia – even as far as, one day, defence procurement. In recent weeks, the lobbying in Washington from GCC states to convince Biden to cut Assad some slack is part of the trade-off, which no doubt the Syrian leader asked for. And to some extent this is happening.

The big thinking from Gulf Arab states is that the ethos behind the Trump move to pull out of the so-called Iran deal (JCPOA) which would have restricted Tehran’s abilities to develop nuclear weapons hasn’t achieved what it set out to do: bring Tehran to its knees begging for a respite to the crippling sanctions.

However, the cruel sanctions which Tehran has had to endure, has made the Gulf Arab leaders themselves beggars and Joe Biden in the awkward position of having to listen to their gripes. Just recently, the GCC made their case to Washington to do something about the Iran deal. And do it as soon as possible.

The Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) on November 18^th joined Jordan, Egypt, France, Germany and the UK in calling for a return to the nuclear deal following a meeting with U.S. Iran envoy Robert Malley in Saudi Arabia.

According to reports, the 12 countries issued a joint statement noting that “a return to mutual compliance with the [nuclear deal] would benefit the entire Middle East, allow for more regional partnerships and economic exchange, with long-lasting implications for growth and the well-being of all people there, including in Iran”.

Several GCC states expressed scepticism when the nuclear deal was first negotiated under former president Barack Obama, with Saudi Arabia calling it “flawed”.

Yet, analysts have to wonder now if the Saudis and Emiraties regret the bullish move by Trump and would have the old deal back. The “flaw” now appears that the West has underestimated how Iran’s more recent activities in the region – from hijacking oil tankers to even attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq – are paying off, combined with the foot-dragging which we’ve seen with the Vienna talks.

The GCC call for a return to the deal comes on the eve of indirect talks between the U.S. and Iran scheduled for November 29.

It also follows a similar joint statement that the U.S. and its GCC partners issued in Saudi Arabia which called for an “urgent mutual return to full compliance” with the nuclear deal, while condemning a “range of aggressive and dangerous Iranian policies, including the proliferation and direct use of advanced ballistic missiles” and drones.

So the message is clear for Biden. The Gulf Arab states are now desperate to get the Iran deal back, fearing that Iran’s overtures are left unchecked and will only get worse. They are asking, bluntly, for Biden to drop the Trump sanctions, fearing that a conflict is imminent, if we are to believe the chest-beating statements from Anthony Blinken, U.S. Secretary of State. The coming weeks now will put the relationship between the GCC and the Biden administration on tenterhooks if Biden doesn’t take the hint and take Obama’s notion of “soft diplomacy” to a new low.

The Belarus border is just the most recent in a long list of examples how Brussels cannot fight back countries who use refugees as a weapon against the EU’s failed hegemony

For many erudite commentators who know the EU well, the scenes on the Poland-Belarus border felt a bit ‘déjà vu’. Once again, the EU’s failed policies when tackling immigration flows — which in many cases are as a direct result of propping up dictators or for dabbling in geopolitics — comes right back and smacks Brussels in the face. Perhaps Belarus is using Syrian refugees as a tool to hit back at Brussels and its bellicose sanctions-based so-called foreign policy. For journalists and analysts who lead with this argument, we can assume that many will be supporters of the EU project itself and are unable to see a bigger picture.

Such a panorama can be summed up in the old English saying “you reap what you sow”. For decades, or certainly since the EU metamorphosised into a geopolitical player since the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty — which signed off on Brussels having over 120 “ambassadors” around the world and a more beefed up foreign policy narrative — we have seen such a doctrine be a rod for its own back. In Libya, in recent years, journalists have seen some of the most barbaric acts of human cruelty known to man with modern day slavery and sexploitation carried out on African migrants fleeing their own countries, run by tyrants whose human rights atrocities frighten them so much, they make the trip for a better life. The irony of this is that those same despots are supported by the EU, sometimes to the tune of hundreds of millions of euros, just as long as they show respect to the EU, its flag and its delusional hegemony. Syria is another example. In 2007, the EU was ready to accept Assad as a new partner in the region but then felt obliged to follow the U.S. in ostracising him later on after he was linked to the assassination of Rafiq Hariri in 2005 and he had the cheek to hit back at what was essentially a western-backed Muslim Brotherhood attempted coup d’etat in 2011. In Libya itself, EU countries were happy to bomb the country in the name of a so-called peace initiative signed off by the UN Security Council — which in the end, secured not a peaceful transition to a more western-style democratic apparatus but the ugly assassination of Ghaddafi himself and a decade of civil war leaving the country divided. Even in Morocco, where old allies like France and Germany are giving up on Rabat, we see the Moroccans respond to EU bullying by opening the gates to thousands of illegal African immigrants who entered Spain — a stunt, not unlike the one from Belarus to send a signal that there is a limit to how much poorer countries on the periphery of the EU country will take from threats from the EU executive in Brussels which of late is in a panic mode.

The refugee flows are nothing new. And the games that poorer, weaker countries play by using them, have also been around for a while. But the EU only has itself to blame when it allowed itself to be blackmailed by Turkey’s maverick president who took money off the EU to not allow them to leave and enter the EU at the Greek border. This was an error and it showed how weak and ineffective the EU project is as what we’re seeing today on Poland’s border finds its roots in the Turkey deal of just a couple of years ago.

Sanctions threats are really all the EU has. But with diminutive growth and a political crisis which sees countries like Poland regularly mulling the idea that the project is not worth the hassle, some might argue that this is a threat from a toothless tiger anyway. U.S. sanctions against Iran, in the end, didn’t amount to the leverage that was hoped. Tehran is moving ahead with a new economic model which involves China and Russia on a grand scale and is almost reaching its pre-2015 oil revenues with black market sales which the Biden administration refuses to tackle head on.

And so these threats are met head on by immigration stunts, which harms the EU project’s credibility as once journalists start writing about immigration, we are reminded that the Schengen Treaty is something that EU member states switch on and off at will without the EU executive even issuing so much as a vexing press release. The Belarus immigration story is really about a country standing up to EU sanctions on the regime and a bigger disingenuous show to supposedly get tough with Russia. Today, it’s Poland on the front line and facing the numbers, which is ironic given that Poland has its own “push back” laws which EU chiefs deem illegal and have been the basis of talks about Warsaw leaving the EU altogether. Before it was Greece on its Turkish border when the policy of Brussels failed spectacularly and we saw right-wing militias “hunting” for Syrian refugees who managed to get across. Slowly, the whole world is waking up to this new retaliation against Brussels as the EU has let its weakest pressure become clearly visible. Even the EU’s own policies on how it controls its own citizens leaves a lot to be desired. But on immigration, there is only dithering, confusion and chaos. If Brussels continues to peddle this fatuous idea that it’s a super power and can make threats to countries that it once called friends in euro-jargon called the ‘network neighbourhood’, then we can only expect more countries to hit it where it hurts.

There are several powder kegs around the world, among them the South China Sea where the Pentagon’s surface warships, surveillance submarines and electronic warfare aircraft try to provoke China to take action against their aggressive operations, to the Baltic and Black Seas in which U.S.-Nato armed forces confronting Russia have the same objective. But in the Middle East, the leaky powder keg that will soon attract an igniting flash is the State of Israel which indulges in equally provocative behaviour. In regard to Palestinians and the Iranian nation the government of Naftali Bennett has been every bit as inhumane, barbaric and confrontational as any of its predecessors.

The attitude of the western world to Israel’s excesses varies from the mildly critical to the entirely tolerant, and there is no question of any action being taken that might alter the Israeli government’s deep-seated determination to rid the country of the Palestinians to whom most of it belongs, and to destroy Iran, preferably by having the United States perform another Iraq-style blitzkrieg. In furtherance of its objectives, Israel continues to persecute Palestinians and carry out clandestine operations that will encourage U.S. action against Iran.

The voices of such as the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Tor Wennesland, are lost among the roar of bulldozers as they destroy Palestinian villages and olive tree plantations. His statement that “I am deeply concerned by continued Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. I reiterate that all settlements are illegal under international law, remain a substantial obstacle to peace, and must cease immediately” was a call to exert pressure on Tel Aviv to abide by what Mr Biden continually refers to as the “rules-based international order.”

But nobody took any action.

A recent example of Israel breaking international law with complete impunity was the announcement that 1,355 new Israeli houses are to be built in seven settlements in the West Bank area, adding to the 2,000 units announced in August. The housing minister, Zeev Elkin, declared that this vast amount of construction is necessary, because “strengthening Jewish presence is essential to the Zionist vision”.

The “Zionist vision” is alarming, and the Jewish Voice for Peace notes that it, as an organisation, is “guided by a vision of justice, equality and freedom for all people. We unequivocally oppose Zionism because it is counter to those ideals.” It continues that “Palestinian dispossession and occupation are by design. Zionism has meant profound trauma for generations, systematically separating Palestinians from their homes, land, and each other. Zionism, in practice, has resulted in massacres of Palestinian people, ancient villages and olive groves destroyed, families who live just a mile away from each other separated by checkpoints and walls…”

On October 29 the European Union voiced disapproval of Zionist settlement expansion, with foreign policy chief Josep Borrell declaring that “settlements are illegal under international law and constitute a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace between the parties.” And Tel Aviv’s Zionist plans for yet more settlements continue as if he had never said a word.

Recently there have been two incidents that define the attitude of the western world to Israel and its policies. In the first, as reported by Euronews, “Israeli police kick Palestinians out of the al-Yusufiye cemetery near the Lion’s Gate entrance to the Aqsa mosque compound in east Jerusalem as construction of the Jewish National Park continues. Many graves in the cemetery have been bulldozed, causing outrage. Palestinian mother Ola Nababteh whose son is buried in the cemetery says she ‘had to move bones around so that she could reach her son’s grave,’ a day after she was dragged away by Israeli police as she tried to cling to her son’s grave.” If there had been such disgusting behaviour by police in Cuba or Venezuela or China or Russia the headlines of the U.S. mainstream media would have been flashing with righteous indignation. Reports and comment pieces would have reached deluge point.

But a search for ‘Ola Nababteh’ in the New York Times or the Washington Post comes up with nothing at all. The dragging by Israeli police of a Palestinian mother from her son’s graveside is regarded as a non-event by western news-controllers.

On the other hand the media considered it important to place on record the fact that Israel’s Energy Minister was unable to attend some proceedings at the COP 26 gathering in Glasgow. As the New York Times reported, “Karine Elharrar, who has muscular dystrophy, arrived at one of the entrances to the event’s compound but her vehicle was not allowed to enter, and the remaining distance was too far for her to go in her wheelchair, she told Israeli media. She waited for two hours and was eventually offered a shuttle to the site, but the shuttle was not wheelchair accessible, she said.” Anyone who suffers from such a disability deserves our deepest sympathy, but this incident was a total charade, because “others in wheelchairs have successfully gained access to the conference facilities, which include elevators, ramps and accessible bathrooms, and Ms. Elharrar was in attendance on Tuesday.”

Ms Elharrar told the BBC that “we can talk about accessibility and the rights of people with disabilities, but in life we need to implement all the conventions and all the regulations and that was an experience that showed that we need to pay attention to all the details everywhere.” Quite so. It is indeed necessary to pay attention to details everywhere, including the sites of Palestinian graves that are being bulldozed to expand construction of the Jewish National Park.

The Glasgow photo-operation was widely covered and CNN reported the comment by Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, that “it is impossible to safeguard our future and address the climate crisis, without first and foremost caring for people, including ensuring accessibility for people with disabilities.” But while the Israeli government and the western media expressed righteous sympathy for a disabled rich Israeli whose motorised wheelchair could not access some ramps and lifts in a conference centre, there was scant expression of “care for people” following the killing by Israeli soldiers on November 5 of a thirteen year-old Palestinian boy, Mohammad Daadas, who had joined a protest against what the UN declares to be Israel’s illegal construction of settlements in the West Bank.

The Times of Israel carried a statement by Israeli Forces that “during the disturbance, rioters threw stones at Israeli soldiers. The troops responded with riot dispersal means and live fire.” There has not been one word of criticism in the western media of the fact that an Israeli soldier who had a stone thrown at him by a thirteen-year-old considered it his duty to shoot him in the stomach — and will not stand the remotest chance of facing action for murder.

In this period of illegal construction by Israel of yet more settlements on Palestinian land, the expansion of the Jewish National Park by bulldozing Palestinian graves and hauling away the mother of a buried son, the shooting to death of a Palestinian 13-year-old by an Israeli soldier, and a much-publicised problem with wheelchair ramps at a conference in Glasgow, there came news on November 2 in the U.S. military publication Stars and Stripes that a three-week exercise involving U.S. and Israeli military forces had begun with the intention of demonstrating the “long-standing relationship with Israel that is so vital to stability and security in the region.”

The sparks are moving inexorably towards the Israeli powder keg, encouraged by Washington’s casual acceptance of atrocities and continuing endorsement of its “long-standing relationship” with the nation that emphasises its “Zionist vision”. What is being ignored by the U.S. and Israel is that the refusal by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to talk with Palestinians opens doors to fundamentalist loonies to take direct action in the Middle East and even elsewhere — like New York or Florida or San Francisco. The Middle East powder keg will affect us all when that final spark ignites it.

On the 65^th anniversary of Israel’s brutal massacre on the village of Kafr Qasem, where 48 Palestinians were gunned down by border police, the colonial entity has still failed to formally acknowledge its responsibility for the killings. A bill presented at the Knesset by Arab Israeli MKs was once again voted down. The bill would have required educational instruction in Israeli schools about the massacre, as well as the publication of any classified documents.

The Kafr Qasem massacre is an example of Israel’s premeditated ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. On the same day it attacked the Suez Canal, along with its French and British allies, a curfew was placed on eight Palestinian villages and communicated late, to ensure that Palestinians travelling back home from work would be out after the time restriction. The massacre is one example of Israel’s ongoing Nakba, and one that targeted Palestinians in Israel. Through re-enactment of terror reminiscent of the Nakba, Israel was aiming at further Palestinian dispossession.

It was only 25 days after the massacre that the international community became knowledgeable of the killings, through a press release by Tawfik Toubi, which explained the gruesome massacres in detail. “In some cases, the police stomped on the heads of the dead and sunk their bayonets in the bodies of the women,” an excerpt from the press release included in Samia Halaby’s book, Drawing the Kafr Qasem Massacres, reads.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog attended this year’s memorial. His presence was an example of Israel’s hypocrisy when it comes to Palestinian history as a result of colonial violence. Asking for “forgiveness”, Herzog stated, “For it is clear to all of us: the killing and injury of innocents are absolutely forbidden. They must remain beyond all political arguments!”

But Israel has never made the distinction of the innocent. All Palestinians are a target, since each Palestinian stands in the way of Israel’s colonial expansion. In the case of Kafr Qasem, however, Israel is not averse to making a distinction between this massacre and other previous bouts of ethnic cleansing. Why should Palestinians “forgive” Israel for the Kafr Qasem massacres when the colonial enterprise is failing to institutionalise its culpability? Furthermore, why ask forgiveness for Kafr Qasem and not for the earlier massacres which paved the way for Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing?

Herzog’s words attempted to steer clear of what he called “political argument”. At the commemoration, he declared, “This is our opportunity, as a human society, to empower what we have in common as citizens and as neighbours.”

There is no equality between what Herzog calls citizens and neighbours without decolonisation. The Israeli president spoke from a privileged position to Palestinians who have lost family members, knowing that the perpetrators faced only a charade of justice. The convicted officials responsible for the murders were released from prison by 1960, by means of reduced sentences or pardons, meaning that the Israeli justice system failed to recognise the severity of the crime and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

Speaking about the massacres politically as well as in terms of criminal culpability is necessary to ensure that the Palestinian narrative emerges. It is well documented that Israel’s existence is rooted in massacres and Palestinians’ dispossession.

With Kafr Qasem, as well as with other massacres, Israel needs to set the record straight – it is a perpetrator, with intent, and with an entire political structure that has supported its ethnic cleansing for decades. There should be no dissociating from political accountability merely to ensure that Palestinian memory remains distinct from the history which Zionist colonisation perpetrated since the Nakba.

Some might recall candidate Joe Biden’s pledge to work to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which was a multilateral agreement intended to limit Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon. The JCPOA was signed by President Barack Obama in 2015, when Biden was Vice President, and was considered one of the only foreign policy successes of his eight years in office. Other signatories to it were Britain, China, Germany, France, and Russia and it was endorsed by the United Nations. The agreement included unannounced inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities by the IAEA and, by all accounts, it was working and was a non-proliferation success story. In return for its cooperation Iran was to receive its considerable assets frozen in banks in the United States and was also to be relieved of the sanctions that had been placed on it by Washington and other governments.

The JCPOA crashed and burned in 2018 when President Donald Trump ordered U.S. withdrawal from the agreement, claiming that Iran was cheating and would surely move to develop a nuclear weapon as soon as the first phase of the agreement was completed. Trump, whose ignorance on Iran and other international issues was profound, had surrounded himself with a totally Zionist foreign policy team, including members of his own family, and had bought fully into the arguments being made by Israel as well as by Israel Lobby predominantly Jewish groups to include the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Trump’s time in office was spent pandering to Israel in every conceivable way, to include recognizing Jerusalem as the country’s capital, granting Israel the green light for creating and expanding illegal settlements on the West Bank and recognizing the occupied Syrian Golan Heights as part of Israel.

Given Trump’s record, most particularly the senseless and against-American-interests abandonment of JCPOA, it almost seemed a breath of fresh air to hear Biden’s fractured English as he committed his administration to doing what he could to rejoin the other countries who were still trying to make the agreement work. After Biden was actually elected, more or less, he and his Secretary of State Tony Blinken clarified what the U.S. would seek to do to “fix” the agreement by making it stronger in some key areas that had not been part of the original document.

Iran for its part insisted that the agreement did not need any additional caveats and should be a return to the status quo ante, particularly when Blinken and his team made clear that they were thinking of a ban on Iranian ballistic missile development as well as negotiations to end Tehran’s alleged “interference” in the politics of the region. The interference presumably referred to Iranian support of the Palestinians as well as its role in Syria and Yemen, all of which had earned the hostility of American “friends” Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Israel inevitably stirred the pot by sending a stream of senior officials, to include Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to discuss “the Iranian threat” with Biden and his top officials. Lapid made clear that Israel “reserves the right to act at any given moment, in any way… We know there are moments when nations must use force to protect the world from evil.” And to be sure, Biden, like Trump, has also made his true sentiments clear by surrounding himself with Zionists. Blinken, Wendy Sherman and Victoria Nuland have filled the three top slots at State Department, all are Jewish and all strong on Israel. Nuland is a leading neocon. And pending is the appointment of Barbara Leaf, who has been nominated Assistant Secretary to head the State Department’s Near East region. She is currently the Ruth and Sid Lapidus Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), which is an AIPAC spin off and a major component in the Israel Lobby. That means that a member in good standing of the Israel Lobby would serve as the State Department official overseeing American policy in the Middle East.

At the Pentagon one finds a malleable General Mark Milley, always happy to meet his Israeli counterparts, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, an affirmative action promotion who likewise has become adept at parroting the line “Israel has a right to defend itself.” And need one mention ardent self-declared Zionists at the top level of the Democratic Party, to include Biden himself, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and, of course, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer?

So rejoining the JCPOA over Israel objections was a non-starter from the beginning and was probably only mooted to make Trump look bad. Indirect talks including both Iran and the U.S. technically have continued in Vienna, though they have been stalled since the end of June. Trita Parsi has recently learned that Iran sought to make a breakthrough for an agreement by seeking a White House commitment to stick with the plan as long as Biden remains in office. Biden and Blinken refused and Blinken has recently confirmed that a new deal is unlikely, saying “time is running out.”

And there have been some other new developments. Israeli officials have been warning for over twenty years that Iran is only one year away from having its own nukes and needs to be stopped, a claim that has begun to sound like a religious mantra repeated over and over, but now they are actually funding the armaments that will be needed to do the job. Israel Defense Force Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi has repeatedly said the IDF is “accelerating” plans to strike Iran, and Israeli politicians to include former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have regularly been threatening to do whatever must be done to deal with the threat from the Islamic Republic. Israeli media is reporting that $1.5 billion has been allocated in the current and upcoming budget to buy the American bunker buster bombs that will be needed to destroy the Iranian reactor at Bushehr and its underground research facilities at Natanz.

In the wake of the news about the war funding, there have also been reports that the Israeli Air Force is engaging in what is being described as “intense” drills to simulate attacking Iranian nuclear facilities. After Israel obtains the 5000 pound bunker buster bombs, it will also need to procure bombers to drop the ordnance, and one suspects that the U.S. Congress will somehow come up with the necessary “military aid” to make that happen. Tony Blinken has also made clear that the Administration knows what Israel is planning and approves. He met with Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid on October 13^th and said if diplomacy with Iran fails, the U.S. will turn to “other options.” And yes, he followed that up with the venerable line that “Israel has the right to defend itself and we strongly support that proposition.”

Lapid confirmed that one of Blinken’s “options” was military action. “I would like to start by repeating what the Secretary of State just said.  Yes, other options are going to be on the table if diplomacy fails.  And by saying other options, I think everybody understands here … what is it that we mean.” It must be observed that in their discussion of Iran’s nuclear program, Lapid and Blinnken were endorsing an illegal and unprovoked attack to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon that it is apparently not seeking, but which it will surely turn to as a consequence if only to defend itself in the future.

In short, U.S. foreign policy is yet again being held hostage by Israel. The White House position is clearly and absurdly that an Israeli attack on Iran, considered a war crime by most, is an act of self-defense. However it turns out, the U.S. will be seen as endorsing the crime and will inevitably be implicated in it, undoubtedly resulting in yet another foreign policy disaster in the Middle East with nothing but grief for the American people.  The simple truth is that Iran has neither threatened nor attacked Israel. Given that, there is nothing defensive about the actions Israel has already taken in sabotaging Iranian facilities and assassinating scientists, and there would be nothing defensive about direct military attacks either with or without U.S. assistance on Iranian soil. If Israel chooses to play the fool it is on them and their leaders. The United States does not have a horse in this race and should butt out, but one doubts if a White House and Congress, firmly controlled by Zionist forces, have either the wisdom or the courage to cut the tie that binds with the Jewish state.