Tag: Israel/Palestine

Netanyahu redux

Posted in Bouela Lehbib - April 15, 2019 - 1 Comment

The Wilson Center held a panel discussion April 11 analyzing the Israeli elections, with David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel, Natan Sachs, Director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, Dana Weiss Chief Political Analyst, and David Halbfinger, Jerusalem Bureau Chief at The New York Times.

Horovitz opines that it might seem the elections were to a large extent a referendum on Netanyahu and that the public wants more of him. But it is more complex than that. The election was a referendum on Netanyahu’s leadership. Voters were looking at Netanyahu as the world leader who kept Israel safe in a toxic and unpredictable region for the past decade. Israelis are not convinced they need to change their leadership in the current hostile environment. Netanyahu is viewed as successful in confronting Iran as it seeks nuclear weapons. He also succeeded in painting the Blue and White alliance, including three chiefs of staff (among them his own former defense minister) as weak leftists who won’t be able to keep the country safe.

Horovitz suggests the interesting thing to focus on after the elections is what Netanyahu will do vis-vis the Palestinians and the corruption allegations against him. He has said will annex all the settlements in the West Bank, where he will apply Israeli laws. Even more important is how Netanyahu will fight off his indictment, using the Knesset to change the process and evade prosecution.

Sachs points out that since 1977, the first time the Likud party came to power in Israel, there have been fourteen elections, ten of which Likud has won. There is a structural advantage to the right wing. The majority of Israelis are right wing, with a small number (around 16%) calling themselves left wing. The left lost credibility among the Israeli voters after 2000 when Israel withdrew from Gaza and the second Intifada broke out. Israelis are pessimistic and skeptical of the possibility of reaching peace any time soon with the Palestinians.

Weiss stated Netanyahu did whatever it takes to win the election. He orchestrated the campaign by himself and a few young media experts. Elections were supposed to take place last November, but Netanyahu held them in April so that he would be strengthened in efforts to evade being indicted and to get immunity. Today, left and right are not about the conflict, it is about the nature of Israel. It is unclear if it will stay democratic and bound to the rule of law. The Blue and White wants to feel more Israeli than Jewish, seeking to keep Israel a democracy and the rule of law consistent. Netanyahu wants the opposite.

Halbfinger suggested that Netanyahu sold the electorate stability as well as economic and military leadership. He demonized his opponents. The fight over the Supreme Court and the judiciary is not personal to Netanyahu. There is a belief on the right that the Supreme Court in Israel, which is very liberal, has been overreaching. The right believes it needs to be brought back under control. For Halbfinger this is brewing into a constitutional crisis in a country that has no constitution.

Tags : ,

Peace Picks 15-19

Posted in Bouela Lehbib - April 14, 2019 - 0 Comment

1.Crisis in Yemen: A Strategic Threat to U.S. Interests and Allies?| Thursday, April 18, 2019 | 11:45 am – 1:30 pm | Hudson Institute | 1201 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Suite 400 Washington, DC 20004| Register Here|

Hudson Institute will host a panel to explore the strategic implications of the conflict in Yemen. In 2014, the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels overthrew the government of Yemen and seized the capital. With U.S. logistical support, Saudi Arabia mustered a coalition to restore the government. In response, the Houthis waged war on Riyadh, firing ballistic missiles at civilian areas, including airports. Though the Houthis have been successful in portraying themselves as defenders of Yemen and Saudi Arabia as the aggressors, they have violated countless internationally brokered ceasefires and the conflict continues today.

In the U.S., Congress has voted to withdraw support from the Saudi-led campaign and the White House has turned up the pressure on Tehran, recently imposing sanctions on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—the Houthis’ patron. Can the Trump administration afford to let the Islamic Republic implant a Hezbollah-clone on the border of a key U.S. ally, thereby creating a failed state, and threatening international trade through Bab al-Mandeb?

Speakers

Fatima Abo Alasrar, Senior Analyst, Arabia Foundation

Michael Doran, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute

Bernard Haykel, Professor, Near Eastern Studies Director, Institute for Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, Princeton University

Lee Smith Speaker, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute

2. Results of the Indonesian Elections: New Directions or More of the Same?| Thursday, April 18, 2019 | 10:00 am – 11:30 pm | The Center for Strategic and International Studies  | 1616 Rhode Island Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20036| Register Here|

The CSIS Southeast Asia Program is pleased to present “Results of the Indonesian Elections: New Directions or More of the Same?” a panel discussion featuring Dr. Ann Marie Murphy (Professor, Seton Hall University) and Adam Schwarz (Founder and CEO, Asia Group Advisors). An estimated 193 million eligible voters in Indonesia will head to the polls on April 17 to cast their vote for president, vice president, and members of the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR).The “Results of the Indonesian Elections: New Directions or More of the Same?” event will assess the outcomes of these elections, and what they mean for Indonesian domestic politics, economic policy, foreign policy, and U.S.-Indonesia relations. 

Speakers

Dr. Ann Marie Murphy, Professor, Seton Hall University

Adam Schwarz, Founder and CEO, Asia Group Advisors

3. Netanyahu’s Reelection: Implications for Israeli Politics and Palestinian Statehood?| Friday, April 19, 2019 | 12:00 am – 1:30 pm | The Center for Strategic and International Studies  | 1319 18th St. NW, Washington D.C. 20036| Register Here|

The reelection of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a fifth term was widely perceived as a blow to the prospects for peace and protection of Palestinian rights.

Netanyahu’s pledge to annex parts of occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank, as well as the ongoing marginalization of Palestinians inside Israel, make Palestinian statehood and the possibility of a peace plan seem ever more distant.

To assess the consequences of this vote, The Middle East Institute (MEI) and The Institute for Palestine Studies (IPS) invite you to a timely conversation with Raef Zreik, a prominent Palestinian lawyer and academic. Zreik will discuss what the elections say about the Israeli body politic, and the implications for Israel’s domestic and foreign policy. Amb. Gerald Feierstein, MEI’s senior vice president, will moderate the conversation. 

Speakers

Raef Zreik, Associate professor, Carmel Academic College; Academic co-director, Minerva Centre for the Humanities, Tel Aviv University

Ambassador Gerald Feierstein, moderator, Senior vice president, MEI

4. Inside the Mind of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba| Monday, April 15, 2019 | 12:00 am – 1:30 pm | The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace  | 1779 Massachusetts Avenue NW Washington, DC 20036-2103| Register Here|

This past November marked the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attack in Mumbai that killed more than 160 people, perpetrated by a Pakistan-based jihadist terrorist group called Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. Today the group still operates inside, and outside, of Pakistan’s borders despite mounting international pressure on Pakistan to disrupt its operations. As the group continues to attack India from bases in Pakistan, it further escalates tensions between the two nuclear-armed countries.

C. Christine Fair’s new book, In Their Own Words: Understanding Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, reveals little-known details of how this group functions by translating and commenting upon its sophisticated propagandist literature. The book examines how this canon of texts is the group’s most popular and potent weapon, in particular demonstrating how Lashkar-e-Tayyaba thinks about recruiting families rather than simply fighters. C. Christine Fair, Joshua T. White, and Polly Nayak will discuss the book’s findings and implications for the broader challenges around Pakistan’s nuclear coercion. Carnegie’s Ashley J. Tellis will moderate.

C. Christine Fair, associate professor in the Security Studies Program within Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.
Polly Nayak, fellow with the South Asia program at the Stimson Center

Joshua T. White, associate professor of the practice of South Asia Studies and Fellow at the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asia Studies at Johns Hopkins SAIS

Polly Nayak, fellow with the South Asia Program at the Stimson Center.

5. Ukraine’s Future Leaders on the Frontlines of Change| Thursday, April 18, 2019 | 12:00 am – 1:30 pm | The Atlantic Council| 1030 15th St NW, Washington, DC 20005| Register Here|

The Atlantic Council and Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), are pleased to invite you to a special event on April 18, 2019 at the Atlantic Council Headquarters (1030 15th Street NW, 12th Floor, West Tower Elevators) to celebrate Ukraine’s future.

In the five years since the end of the Revolution of Dignity, Ukraine continues to ask the important question: How will the country ensure democratic values in its future development? Much of Ukraine’s hope lies in its young leaders who will drive the country forward in the coming years. CDDRL has been fortunate to provide a year-long residency to some of these future leaders as part of the Center’s Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program.

Agenda
Welcome and Introduction:

Ambassador John Herbst, Director, Eurasia Center, Atlantic Council

Keynote Address:

Dr. Francis Fukuyama, Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University

Panel Discussion:

Ms. Nataliya Mykolska, Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program 2018-19, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies;Former Trade Representative of Ukraine, Deputy Minister, Stanford University; Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine

Mr. Ivan Prymachenko, Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program 2018-19, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; Co-founder, Stanford University; Prometheus

Ms. Oleksandra Ustinova, Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program 2018-19, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; Head of Communications and Anti-Corruption in HealthCare Projects, Stanford University; Anti-Corruption Action Center (ANTAC)

Moderated By: Ms. Melinda Haring, Editor, UkraineAlert, Atlantic Council

6. Algeria what happened? What’s next?| Monday, April 15, 2019 | 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm | Project on Middle East Democracy | 1730 Rhode Island Ave NW #617, Washington, DC 20036| Register Here|

Since February, millions of Algerians have taken to the streets week after week for historic, peaceful mass protests against a fifth term for President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and for democratic change. The popular pressure led to the postponement of the April 24 presidential elections and, on April 2, to Bouteflika’s resignation after 20 years in power. Abdelkader Bensalah, long a key ally of Bouteflika and since 2002 the Speaker of Algeria’s upper house of parliament, has been appointed interim president. This appointment is in line with Algeria’s constitution, but is contrary to protesters’ demand for a genuinely independent figure to oversee this transitional period. The next steps remain unclear and many Algerians worry that the regime will resist a democratic transition. Please join POMED to hear from a panel of Algeria experts who will analyze what led to the protests, what has happened so far, and what might happen next.

 Rochdi Alloui, Independent Analyst on North Africa, Georgia State University

Alexis Arieff, Africa Policy Analyst, Congressional Research Service

Amel Boubekeur, (speaking by video from Algiers)
Research Fellow, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales 

William Lawrence, Visiting Professor of Political Science and International Affairs,
George Washington University
 
Moderator: Stephen McInerney, Executive Director, POMED

7. Africa in Transition: Investing in Youth for Economic Prosperity| Tuesday, April 16, 2019 | 9:30 am – 11:30 am | The Wilson Center| 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW Washington, DC 20004-3027| Register Here|

Africa is at a crossroads—and which road its leaders take will shape the lives of billions of people, not only in Africa but also beyond its borders. Often overlooked, population trends play a significant role in Sub-Saharan Africa’s chances for prosperity. Between 15 and 20 million young people are expected to join the African workforce every year for the next three decades. Investing in the health and education of these young people, and providing opportunities for employment, will be essential to ensuring a positive future marked by economic prosperity and stability in the region.

Please join the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program and Maternal Health Initiative, in partnership with Population Institute, for a discussion about impactful investments that country leaders can make to empower their countries’ youth.

Speakers

Moderator, Lauren Herzer Risi, Project Director, Environmental Change and Security Program
Parfait Eloundou-Enyegue, Professor, Department Chair, Department of Development Sociology, Cornell University; Associate Director, Cornell Population Center, Unami Jeremiah, Founder, Mosadi Global Trust
Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, Founder and CEO, Conservation Through Public Health
Musimbi Kanyoro, President and Chief Executive Officer, Global Fund for Women

Tags : , , , , , , ,

Your Saturday video

Posted in Daniel Serwer - April 12, 2019 - 0 Comment

I appeared with Middle East Institute President Paul Salem and Dialogue Director Randa Slim to discuss my From War to Peace in the Middle East, Balkans and Ukraine this week. I presented the lessons learned from peacebuilding in the Balkans that I believe should be applied in the Middle East. Here is the video:

Here are the powerpoint slides I used as my notes:

Download

Tags : , ,

Pompeo midway to failure

Posted in Daniel Serwer - March 27, 2019 - 0 Comment

Secretary Pompeo in testimony todaycited the Administration’s foreign policy priorities:

  • Countering Russia and China,
  • Denuclearization of North Korea,
  • Venezuela,
  • Iran,
  • and supporting allies and partners.

So how are they doing?

The only serious effort to counter Russia has come from the Congress, which has levied several layers of sanctions on Moscow for interference in the 2016 US election, and from the State Department, for Moscow’s murder of a defector in the United Kingdom. President Trump has still not said an unkind word about President Putin and continues to cite him as more reliable than the American intelligence community, without acknowledging Russian electoral interference.

On China, the Administration has been walking on eggshells, since it needs Beijing’s cooperation both on North Korea and on trade. There is little to no sign of a serious strategy to contain or compete with China (in anything but trade). China continues its buildup of military bases in the South China Sea, where it has also escalated its challenges to US naval vessels.

The North Korea talks are at a standstill after the failure in February of the second Kim/Trump summit in Vietnam. Trump is demanding immediate denuclearization in one step while the Pyongyang has maintained its vague commitment to a phased process whose endpoint is unclear. All those promises of Trump-like hotels are not going to convince Kim Jong-un that he should abandon his regime’s only real guarantee: its nuclear arsenal and ballistic missiles.

Venezuela is grinding to a stalemate, with the Russians deploying troops there and no sign of the military defections required to seat President Guaido’ in President Maduro’s chair. A US military intervention would have to be massive and long-term. Nothing short of that seems to be working. Venezuelans are voting with their feet by leaving the country, but that does not help bring down Maduro.

Sanctions on Iran have so far had little visible impact, other than giving the Europeans an incentive to find a way to continue to expand trade with Tehran. China and Russia will also find the ways and means. The Iranian economy is a mess, not only because of sanctions. The Administration hopes to compel the Iranians back to the negotiating table or to precipitate regime change. Neither outcome is visible on the horizon. In the meanwhile, hardliners have gained strength and continue to pursue regional interventions.

Support for allies and partners is a lot easier than dealing with adversaries, but the Trump Administration has been selective about it. The ultranationalists who govern Hungary and Poland and the Brexiteers in the UK get Trump’s blessing. France, Germany and the European Union get kicked hard. Israel gets endorsement of whatever it wants (so far, recognition of Jerusalem as its capital and of the annexation of the Golan Heights, not to mention a green light for killing Gaza demonstrators), leaving crumbs for the Palestinians. Saudi Arabia gets American top cover for Mohammed bin Salman against charges that he was implicated in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

To add insult to injury, Pompeo said this about the State Department, whose budget the President has proposed to cut back by 23%:


And I take it as a personal mission to make sure that our world-class diplomatic personnel have the resources they need to execute America’s diplomacy in the 21st century.

Trump’s cuts target especially the State Department’s cooperation with the military in stabilizing conflict situations like Syria and Afghanistan, which is a required prelude to the withdrawals he has rashly announced.

I suppose I need to give Pompeo an incomplete rather than an F, since it is possible the next 22 months will provide better results than the last 26. Real diplomacy does take time. But there is precious little sign of real diplomacy on the priorities Pompeo identifies.

Tags : , , , , , , ,

Your Saturday video

Posted in Daniel Serwer, Uncategorized - March 9, 2019 - 0 Comment

I’ve written many screeds against partition schemes, but none more effective than this from Yes Prime Minister:

Tags : , , , , ,

From War to Peace

Posted in Daniel Serwer - February 14, 2019 - 1 Comment

Here are the notes I used for my presentation of From War to Peace in the Balkans, Middle East, and Ukraine yesterday at Johns Hopkins/SAIS, which has made it available free world-wide at that link. I am grateful to colleagues David Kanin and Majda Ruge for commenting and critiquing. 

  1. It is a pleasure to present at this Faculty Research Forum, which will I think be a bit different from others. I’ll be concerned not only with analyzing what happened and is happening now in the Balkans but also with what should happen. I will try to fill the academic/practitioner gap.

 

  1. I am particularly pleased as the event includes two of the best-informed people I know on the Balkans: David Kanin, whom I first met when he worked in the 1990s at the CIA Balkans Task Force, teaches the Balkans course here at SAIS; and Majda Ruge, who is both a native of the Balkans and a colleague at the Foreign Policy Institute.

 

  1. Some of you will remember the Balkans in the 1990s: the US and Europe fumbling for years in search of peaceful solutions in Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, and Kosovo only to find themselves conducting two air wars against Serb forces.

 

  1. But most Americans have forgotten this history. Europeans often believe there were no positive results. In the Balkans, many are convinced things were better under Tito.

 

  1. I beg to differ: the successes as well as the failures of international intervention in the Balkans should not be forgotten or go unappreciated.

 

  1. That’s why I wrote my short book, which treats the origins, consequences, and aftermath of the 1995, 1999 and 2001 interventions that led to the end of the most recent Balkan wars.

 

  1. As for the causes of the Balkan wars of the 1990s, my view is that there were three fundamental ingredients: the breakup of former Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milošević’s political ambitions and military capability, and ethnic nationalism, particularly in its territorial form.

 

  1. Where all three were present in good measure, as in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo, war was inevitable. Where Milosevic’s political ambitions were limited, as in Slovenia, war was short. Where his political ambitions and others’ ethnic nationalism were attenuated, as in Macedonia and Montenegro, war was mostly avoided.

 

  1. The breakup of Yugoslavia is now a done deal, even if Serbia continues to resist acknowledging it. So too are Milosevic’s political ambition AND military capability. No one has inherited them. The third factor—ethnoterritorial nationalism—is still very much alive. All the Balkans peace agreements left it unscathed.

 

  1. Conflict prevention and state-building efforts since the 1990s have been partly successful, though challenging problems remain in Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo, and Serbia. My former SAIS colleague Michael Mandelbaum is wrong: the transformation mission in the Balkans is not a failed mission, but rather an incomplete one.

 

  1. He thinks it failed because his explicit point of comparison is an ideal: the U.S. he says did not “succeed in installing well-run, widely accepted governments in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, or Kosovo.” I think Bosnia and Kosovo are works in progress because they are so obviously improved from their genocidal and homicidal wars. State capture is better than mass atrocity.

 

  1. The book examines each of the Balkan countries on its own merits, as well as their prospects for entry into NATO and the EU, whose doors are in theory open to all the Balkan states.

 

  1. {slide} Bottom line: all the states that emerged from Yugoslavia as well as Albania are closer to fulfilling their Euroatlantic ambitions than they are to the wars and collapse of the 1990s.

 

  1. All can hope to be EU members, and NATO allies if they want, by 2030, if they focus their efforts.

 

  1. {Slide} They were making decent progress when the financial crisis struck in 2007/8. The decade since then has been disappointing in many different respects:
  • Growth slowed and even halted in some places.
  • The Greek financial crisis cast a storm cloud over the EU and the euro.
  • The flow of refugees, partly through the Balkans, from the Syrian and Afghanistan wars as well as from Africa soured the mood further.
  • Brexit, a symptom of the much wider rise of mostly right-wing, anti-European populism, has made enlargement look extraordinarily difficult.

 

  1. {Slide} The repercussions in the Balkans have been dire:
  • Bosnia’s progress halted as it slid back into ethnic nationalist infighting.
  • Macedonia’s reformist prime minister became a defiant would-be autocrat.
  • Kosovo and Serbia are stalled in their difficult normalization process.
  • Russia has taken advantage of the situation to slow progress towards NATO and the EU.

 

  1. Moscow tried to murder Montenegro’s President to block NATO membership, finances Bosnia’s Serb secessionist entity, campaigned against resolving the Macedonia name issue, and undermines free media throughout the Balkans.

 

  1. Now the question is whether the West, demoralized and divided by Donald Trump and other populists, can still muster the courage to resolve the remaining problems in the Balkans and complete the process of EU and, for those who want it, NATO accession.

 

  1. Plan A is still viable. I also don’t see a Plan B that comes even close to the benefits of completing Plan A.

 

  1. When I wrote the book, three big obstacles remained. Now there are only two.

 

  1. The first obstacle was the Macedonia “name” issue. For those who may not follow the Balkans, the Greeks claim the name “Macedonia” belongs exclusively to the Hellenic tradition and would like the modern, majority Slavic country that uses that name to stop using it.

 

  1. Skopje and Athens have now resolved this issue. New leadership was key to making it happen.

 

  1. For those who claim the West is prepared to tolerate corruption and state capture in order to ensure stability in the Balkans, I suggest a chat with Nikola Gruevski.

 

  1. Washington and Brussels helped chase him from office in 2017, once his malfeasance was well-publicized and a popular alternative appeared on the horizon. If there is a viable liberal democratic option, the West has been willing to support it.

 

  1. The solution to the name issue is deceptively simple: now ratified in both parliaments, the Republic of Macedonia will become the Republic of North Macedonia, which most of its inhabitants and most of us will continue to call just Macedonia.

 

  1. The Republic of North Macedonia can now hope to join NATO, perhaps by the end of this year, and become a candidate for EU accession.

 

  1. There is a lot more to it, but that is all that will matter to you and me. The rest is for the Greeks and Macedonians.

 

  1. The second big obstacle is normalization between Belgrade and Pristina, which will require mutual recognition and exchange of diplomatic representatives at the ambassadorial level.

 

  1. This is closer than most think. Serbia has already abandoned its claim to sovereignty over all of Kosovo, in an April 2013 Brussels agreement that established the validity of the Kosovo constitution on its whole territory and foresaw Kosovo and Serbia entering the EU separately and without hindering each other. Only sovereign states can enter the EU.

 

  1. {Slide} Belgrade has also implicitly acknowledged Kosovo’s sovereignty in opening the question of partition along ethnic lines. Serbia would like to absorb the 3.5 or 4 (depending on how you count) municipalities in northern Kosovo, three of which were majority Serb before the war.

Read more

Tags : , ,
Tweet