Attempts by Arab states to mend ties with Damascus serve to bolster the Syrian government’s victories on the ground and may well see the West changing its attitude towards the country, Middle East experts have told RT.
The first sign of a thaw between Syria and its Arab neighbors came earlier in December when Sudanese President Omar Bashir visited Damascus. It was followed by Wednesday’s report that the Arab League may readmit Syria into the 22-member bloc sometime next year, and the announcement by the UAE on Thursday that it’s reopening its embassy in the Syrian capital.
Damascus was kicked out of the Arab League in 2011 as President Bashar Assad was accused of atrocities against his people. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Arab states have been actively pushing for the removal of Assad from power during the years of the deadly war, and had been slammed by Damascus on numerous occasions for their support of armed extremists fighting against the Assad government.
Yet, the desire for rapprochement with Damascus now “is not a manifestation of brotherly love to [Syrian president Bashar] Assad,” Sergey Balmasov, of the Institute of the Middle East, believes. Those moves are dictated by the situation on the ground, where Damascus now controls most of the country’s territory.
“They are now thinking: ‘Well, we couldn’t remove Assad and we lost a lot of money on it, but we’ll lose even more if we keep not recognizing him.”
A similar stance was shared by Middle East expert Andrey Ontikov, who said that for the Arab states it’s now “obvious that they’d have to deal with Assad and the current Syrian authorities in any case as they’ll keep playing an important role in the political life of the country.”
Saudi Arabia, UAE and others simply remembered that “when one can’t cope with the problem it’s easier for him to tame it by acting [within] the existing circumstances,” he added.
Yet by mending ties and “bringing their money into Syria, the Gulf States may achieve what they couldn’t do militarily,” Balmasov cautioned.
Syria had previously rejected Arab assistance in post-war reconstruction, saying that the country shouldn’t be rebuilt by those who worked to destroy it. But this may well change, as Damascus may well need any and all help to rebuild the ravaged country. Balmasov pointed out that, with their investment, Arab states might also seek to diminish Iran’s influence in the country.
It’s also no coincidence that the Arab League began moving towards Syria shortly after US President Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of American troops, as now there is a “real chance of the Syrian government taking control of almost all of the country’s territory,” Konstantin Truevtsev, of the Center for Arabic Studies, said.
After the Americans depart, those areas in northern Syria will fall under the control of the Kurds, who “would have no other way than to find common ground with Damascus,” Ontikov pointed out. “It’s just a question of time.”
Syrian government forces are already on the outskirts of the city of Manbij in the province of Aleppo, which makes the prospects of a Turkish military operation against the Kurds “very doubtful,” Truevtsev added.
Another reason for the current rapprochement was that “the Arab leaders have perfect understanding that Trump isn’t going to lock horns with [Russia’s President Vladimir] Putin over Syria,” Balmasov said. “It’s just war of words and nothing more.”
“Already now nobody is talking about regime change in Syria… The West has long ago removed the issue of Assad leaving power from the agenda,” Truevtsev pointed out.
Eventual stabilization of the situation in Syria is also “of prime importance” to Europe because of the refugee issue, Ontikov noted. And because of this “the West should give up on its unilateral sanctions against Damascus and take part in the post war reconstruction of Syria without insisting on the completion of the political process in the country. The work must begin now.”
December 28, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Syria, UAE |
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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Last Wednesday, a group of prominent and select American Muslim leaders traveled to the United Arab Emirates to participate in the fifth annual conference of the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies (FPPMS), which is sponsored by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abdullah bin Zayed, and headed by Mauritanian Islamic scholar, Abdullah bin Bayyah. Despite the country’s appalling human rights record, U.S. Muslim leaders present praised the country for being “committed to tolerance […] and civil society.”
During the conference, the same Muslim figures were photographed in a meeting with several leading members of the Zionist-Jewish American community including representatives of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a powerful pro-Israel lobby organization whose dark history of domestic spying and investment of millions of dollars to extinguish all criticism of Israel is documented in a 2014 report by AMP. The photo, which was widely tweeted on Friday by ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, features Sh. Hamza Yusuf, a California-based scholar who has been described by the Guardian as “arguably the West’s most influential Islamic scholar,” and Imam Mohamed Magid, the former president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), who serves as the Executive Imam of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) Center in Virginia.
It is worth noting that the UAE “Promoting Peace Forum” was founded in 2014, the same year that the UAE government designated CAIR, the largest Muslim civil rights organization in America, a terrorist organization. Several critics have denounced this forum as part of a series of counter-revolutionary measures carried out in the wake of the Arab Spring to crush pro-democracy efforts in the region and promote obedience toward autocratic rulers. It’s been previously exposed that conferences such as these are part of a sophisticated PR campaign by the Emirati government to pursue its own political agenda in the name of “moderate Islam”. AMP is disturbed by the continuous participation of some American Muslim leaders in these propaganda conferences that whitewash the nefarious agenda of the UAE government.
“Given the UAE’s dismal record on human rights and its catastrophic policies in the region, as in Yemen and the staging of counter-revolutions, it is the last country to allege the promotion of peace in Muslim societies. The American Muslim leaders and scholars who participated in the conference should not have lent their names to an event aimed at legitimizing a regime that has brought much harm to their own communities and other nations,” said AMP National Policy Director Osama Abuirshaid. If “promoting peace” in Muslim societies is the purported objective of this forum then it should have called for the immediate ceasefire and end to the armed intervention in Yemen, and expressed solidarity with the Palestinians living under Apartheid conditions and occupation.
Not only has the UAE labeled the most prominent American Muslim civic group as a terrorist organization, it also has elevated virulently Islamophobic and pro-Israel organizations such as the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), whose senior researcher Jonathan Schanzer has waged a longstanding smear campaign against AMP and was recently captured maligning Palestine activists in the censored Al Jazeera documentary on the Israel Lobby . The film sheds light on the operations directed at demonizing Muslims and Palestine activists in the U.S. The hosting of the ADL at this year’s conference is especially disconcerting given the group’s sinister history of instigating political prosecutions against prominent American Muslim and Palestinian leaders and institutions, as detailed in Israeli author Miko Peled’s recent book Injustice: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five. Peled recently commented to AMP that the ADL “is an organization dedicated to protecting Israel from criticism. They conflate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism. The ADL supports the racism, ethnic cleansing, genocide and apartheid regime to which Israel has subjected the Palestinians. ADL does not represent Jewish people and must be shunned by people of conscience.” Rather than invite the ADL and AJC to the stage, the primary purveyors of Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian discourses, the “Peace Forum” should have expressed support for the peaceful and nonviolent BDS movement and highlight the global success of the Palestinian struggle.
Since the Arab Spring, the UAE government has exposed itself as an enemy of human rights and democracy. From intervening in Libya and Egypt to aiding and abetting Saudi crimes in Yemen, supporting its blockade of Qatar, and helping cover up its recent murder of dissident Jamal Khashoggi, it is clear that the country is willing to secure its regional strategic interests at all costs and on the backs of millions of Muslims and Arabs. Meanwhile, it continues to openly tighten its relationship with Israel, working with lobby groups in the U.S. and purchasing Israeli spyware to target civil society both locally and abroad. No conference or publicity stunt can change these critical facts or boost this country’s corrupt image.
“This was a conference to normalize Islamophobia, bigotry against Muslims in the West, in addition to normalizing relations and engagement with apologists for Israel’s aggression against the Palestinian people. The participation of these Muslim leaders and scholars make us wonder whether they are involved in last year’s revealed attempts of UAE’s ambassador in Washington to hijack the representation of Islam in the U.S. under the pretext of promoting ‘moderate’ Islam which is in essence a distorted complacent form of Islam that aligns itself with Zionists and Islamophobes in the U.S. through trojan horses within the American Muslim community,” Abuirshaid added.
The active participation of some American Muslim leaders in these dubious initiatives with a deeply troubling agenda demands serious and urgent accountability.
December 12, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | AJC, FDD, Middle East, Palestine, UAE, United States |
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Spokesman for Yemen’s revolutionary Ansarullah movement Mohammad Abdulsalam, who heads a delegation in the ongoing peace talks in Sweden, said the presence of foreign forces in the Arabian Peninsula country cannot be justified.
Speaking to the Arabic-language al-Masirah TV on Tuesday night, Abdulsalam said the foreign troops’ presence in Yemen is contrary to the country’s constitution and UN Security Council resolutions.
“The presence of foreign forces in Yemen is not justified as long as our approach is political settlement (of the crisis),” he said.
Yemen’s occupied areas are now controlled by foreigners such as British, Saudi and Emirati forces, not a group that calls itself “legitimate”, he added, referring to the Yemeni exiled government which claims legitimacy.
The Ansarullah spokesman went on to say that no party could demand the presence of foreign forces in Yemen.
Abdulsalam further said that in the UN-brokered peace talks in Stockholm, Sweden, the two sides have reached some agreements on ceasefire in some areas.
The talks opened Thursday on an upbeat note, with the warring sides agreeing to a broad prisoner swap, boosting hopes that the talks would not deteriorate into further violence as in the past.
Yemen has been since March 2015 under brutal aggression by Saudi-led Coalition, in a bid to restore control to fugitive president Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi who is Riyadh’s ally.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and injured in the strikes launched by the coalition, with the vast majority of them are civilians.
The coalition, which includes in addition to Saudi Arabia and UAE: Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Sudan and Kuwait, has been also imposing a harsh blockade against Yemenis.
Some 8.4 million Yemenis are facing starvation as a result of the Saudi-led aggression, although the United Nations has warned that will probably rise to 14 million.
Three-quarters of impoverished Yemen’s population, or 22 million people, require aid.
December 12, 2018
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Illegal Occupation | Saudi Arabia, UAE, Yemen |
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The annual summit meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in Riyadh on Sunday was particularly important for Saudi Arabia as a display of its regional leadership. But the short meeting of the GCC leaders behind closed doors, lasting for less than an hour, ended highlighting the huge erosion of Saudi prestige lately.
The litmus test was the participation by Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani. King Salman’s letter of invitation to the emir was perceived as some sort of an olive branch for reconciliation. But Qatar’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi represented the country at the summit.
The calculation by the hot headed crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the UAE that Qatar would pack up is turning out to be a historic blunder. Qatar had some trying times but it has successfully weathered the harsh embargo by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and the boycott is now hurting its enforcers. Qatar “celebrated” the anniversary of the boycott in June by banning the import of goods from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt (which had cut diplomatic and transport ties on June 5, 2017.) Ironically, Iran has been a beneficiary as Qatar established diplomatic relations with Tehran and began importing Iranian products.
Qatar also strengthened its alliance with Turkey, which stepped in as provider of security for Doha. And Turkey checkmated any plans that Saudis and Emiratis might have had to use force to bring the Qatari emir down on his knees.
The emir’s absence from the summit in Riyadh yesterday underscores that he is not in a mood to forget and forgive. Equally, Kuwait and Oman also have issues to settle with Saudi Arabia and the UAE. There is tension between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia over two oil fields – Khafji and Wafra – that are jointly owned by the two states, which have a capacity to produce more than half a million barrels per day, but have been closed since 2014 and 2015, respectively. The dispute is over the sovereignty over the so-called Neutral Zone on their border, which has been undefined for almost a century.
The Saudis are not relenting. “We’re trying to convince the Kuwaitis to talk about the sovereignty issues, while continuing to produce until we solve that issue,” Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Bloomberg in an interview in October. Similarly, Saudis and Emiratis have stationed troops in Yemen’s southern province of al-Mahra that borders Oman although the region has no presence of Houthi rebels. Oman considers the move an infringement on its national security. Interestingly, instead of the Sultan of Oman, Deputy Prime Minister for the Council of Ministers Sayyid Fahd bin Mahmood Al Said represented the country at the GCC summit.
To be sure, like Banquo’s ghost at Macbeth’s banquet in Shakespeare’s play, the killing of Jamal Khashoggi provided the backdrop to the GCC summit. The GCC states (including Qatar) have not criticized the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) but they would know this is a developing story and it has dented Saudi prestige irreparably, especially with the US Senate is at loggerheads with the Trump administration. The big question for the Gulf region would be as to where Saudi Arabia is heading. (See the blog by Thomas Lippman What Now For U.S. Policy And The Crown Prince?)
Of course, if the GCC disintegrates due to these contradictions, Saudi Arabia will be the big loser, because it will be a reflection on its regional leadership. But do the Saudis understand it? The remarks by the Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir at the end of the GCC summit showed no sign of remorse.
He said, “The members of the Gulf Cooperation Council are keen that the crisis with Qatar will have no impact on the Council (GCC). But this does not mean relinquishing the conditions imposed on Qatar.” Doha should stop supporting terrorism and extremism and avoid interfering in other countries’ affairs and needed to fulfill the Arab countries’ conditions to open the way for its return to the full-fledged work in the GCC. “The stance towards Qatar came to push it to change its policies,” he added.
The leading Saudi establishment writer Abdulrehman al-Rashed fired away at Qatar on the day of the GCC summit. In a column entitled Is it Time to end the GCC? in the Saudi daily Asharq Al-Awsat (owned by royal family members) he wrote:
“Qatar… has been putting obstacles in the GCC path and it has succeeded where Saddam and Iran have failed: It managed to destroy and rip it [GCC] apart… It organized an internal and external opposition against the United Arab Emirates. It is now the primary financier of the greatest attack against Saudi Arabia and it stands behind the politicization of Khashoggi’s murder… Today’s [GCC] summit could not conceal the dark political cloud hanging over its head. It also strongly poses a question over the future of the GCC as doubts rise over the value of this union… A wedge has been driven in the GCC.”
The disarray within the GCC undoubtedly calls attention to the decline of US influence in the Middle East region. At the end of the day, the Gulf states have not paid heed to repeated US entreaties for GCC unity. Ideally, GCC should have provided today for the US strategy a strong platform for launching the regime change project against Iran. On the contrary, GCC is split down the middle, with Qatar, Oman and Kuwait getting along just fine with Tehran. While addressing the summit in Riyadh on Sunday, the Emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad hit the nail on the head when he said, “The most dangerous obstacle we face is the struggle within the GCC.”
December 11, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | Bahrain, Egypt, GCC, Iran, Kuwait, Middle East, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UAE |
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The media in Tel Aviv have reported that the UAE has invested as much as $100 million in an ambitious Israeli project to pipe natural gas to Europe.
The investment would be made by a company based in Abu Dhabi for a pipeline project which is internationally known to be unique given its record length as well as the extreme depths it would be laid toward Europe, Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen quoted Israeli media as reporting.
The agreement has been described as “historic” by Israeli media, al-Mayadeen added.
Israel has signed a multilateral deal over the scheme – called the East Med Pipeline Project – with Greece, Italy and Cyprus. The European Union also supports the project.
The East Med Pipeline Project is to start about 170 kilometers (105 miles) off Cyprus’s southern coast and stretch for 2,200 kilometers (1,350 miles) to reach Otranto, Italy, via Crete and the Greek mainland, according to a report by The Times of Israel news website.
The pipeline will have the capacity to carry up to 20 billion cubic meters (706 billion cubic feet) of gas from Israeli fields each year. Europe’s gas import needs are projected to increase by 100 billion cubic meters (3.5 billion cubic feet) annually by 2030.
Work on the project is expected to begin within a few months, and to conclude within five years.
UAE’s investment in the project could trigger protests in the Muslim world. The Emirates has already taken moves to approach Tel Aviv with speculations recently emerging that it has even involved itself in certain military operations by Israel on Gaza.
Last December, Israel’s Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said a study on the project showed that the project is feasible, even though it presents technical challenges due to the depths involved and has an estimated cost of 6.2 billion euro ($7.36 billion).
Israel has already engaged in disputes with Lebanon over tapping into Mediterranean energy resources.
Last February, Israel described as “very provocative” a Lebanese tender for projects in two of its 10 offshore blocks in the Mediterranean Sea.
Israel itself has long been developing a number of offshore gas deposits in the Mediterranean Sea, with the Tamar gas field, with proven reserves of 200 billion cubic meters, already producing gas, while the larger Leviathan field is expected to go online in the coming months.
A source close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in 2012 that Israel’s natural gas reserves were worth around $130 billion. A Business Week estimate later that year put the reserves’ value at $240 billion.
November 25, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Economics | Cyprus, Greece, Israel, Italy, Middle East, UAE |
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The reported plan by the United Arab Emirates to reopen its embassy in Damascus shortly leads to a startlingly new alignment on the map of the Middle East.
At the most obvious level, it signals the realization among the Gulf States that the brutal war to overthrow the Syrian government has ended. But the pragmatism is stunning. There isn’t even going to be any ‘cooling-off’ period!
What explains the urgency? Analysts may say it is to counter Iran’s influence. After all, the Saudis with UAE backing tried a similar approach in Iraq through the past year – to counter Iran’s multi-vectored influence in Iraq.
But the UAE cannot but be unaware of the exceptionally strong bonding between Damascus and Tehran. Syria may have uses for ‘green money’ to advance its reconstruction agenda but Iran’s backing has existential dimensions.
The western analysts tend to view the Iran factor as the leitmotif of Middle Eastern developments. However, in this cacophony over Iran, we are largely overlooking that simmering differences among the major Sunni states have also surged to the centre stage lately.
Through the past 2-3 year period, a Turkish-Qatari alignment has crystallized. For Qatar, Turkey’s support is invaluable for resisting the pressures on its strategic autonomy from the regimes in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The establishment of a Turkish military base in Qatar underscores this new axis. Lately, Qatar has become a pillar of financial support for the Turkish economy.
Neither Qatar nor Turkey is flustered by Iran’s rise. Neither is seeking Iran’s isolation, either. Washington recently ‘granted’ a waiver to Turkey to continue to buy oil from Iran, but Ankara shot back saying it opposed US sanctions anyway, calling them ‘imperialistic’.
For Turkey too, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are the principal regional adversaries today. Turkey viewed with disquiet the UAE’s support of terrorist groups in Libya, Yemen and Syria. In next-door Syria, the Saudi and Emirati openly supported ISIS groups and al-Qaeda affiliates. Circles close to Turkey’s ruling elite have alleged that UAE is targeting Erdogan in a concerted way.
However, the ‘red line’ was crossed when the two Gulf oligarchies lent support to the failed coup in 2016 in Turkey to assassinate President Recep Erdogan. (After the coup failed, it took 16 hours for Riyadh to even issue a statement!) Turkey estimated that the UAE provided a staging post for the coup plotters.
As Turkey sees it, the UAE is implementing a western project to weaken it. Meanwhile, reports also appeared that the two Gulf oligarchies have been funding the Kurdish militant groups (who are the US’ allies in Syria.)
No doubt, it is a combustible mix. But what makes it really explosive is the perception in Abu Dhabi and Riyadh that Turkey and Qatar are patronizing the Muslim Brotherhood as a potent vehicle for the democratic transformation of the Muslim Middle East.
Both regimes (Saudi Arabia and the UAE) regard the Brotherhood as existential threat. Their visceral hatred of Brothers is such that they bankrolled the coup d’état against elected Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi in 2013 in a multi-billion dollar project.
Enter Syria. Given the above backdrop, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are inclined to sense a convergence with the Syrian regime on pushing back at Erdogan’s perceived aspirations of ‘neo-Ottomanism’ in general and his support of the Brotherhood as a vehicle of change in particular.
A tantalizing question will be: Where does the US stand apropos the Brotherhood? The Barack Obama administration with a sense of history saw in the Brotherhood much potential to finesse the Arab Spring toward establishment of ‘Islamic democracy’ in the Middle East. The US had dealings with the Brotherhood in Egypt based on estimation that it could do business with them and even influence them to democratize the Muslim Middle East. Of course, the premature end to the transition in Egypt in 2013 changed everything.
The Muslim Brotherhood lobbying US Congress, May 2017
Erdogan always hoped that the US (and the West as a whole) would appreciate that Turkey is uniquely placed to play the leadership role in the transition to a New Middle East. The Khashoggi affair has noticeably rekindled those hopes. (Interestingly, the spokesmen of the US intelligence establishment who have been very vocal about the Kahshoggi affair have also suddenly mellowed toward Erdogan.)
Now, this subtle shift on the part of the ‘Deep State’ in America toward Erdogan couldn’t have gone unnoticed in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. It has probably prompted them to open a line to Damascus as early as possible.
How this delicate tango will play out remains to be seen, since there are far too many variables. With the US midterm elections over, President Trump may come under pressure to ‘do something’ on the Khashoggi affair.
Meanwhile, the Saudi and Emirati presence in Syria will be a matter of concern for Turkey in the ‘post-truth’ politics after Khashoggi’s murder.
November 8, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Economics | Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, UAE |
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The Houthi Ansarullah movement has opposed a US proposal for mediation in efforts to resolve the conflict in Yemen, holding Washington responsible for the Saudi-led aggression against Yemen.
Mohammed al-Bakhiiti, a member of Ansarullah’s Political Council, told Iran’s Arabic-language Al-Alam news network on Wednesday that peace would be restored to Yemen if the US ended its war on the impoverished country.
He also expressed his objection to any solution to the Yemen crisis that ignores the country’s independence and sovereignty.
On Tuesday, American officials called for a ceasefire in Yemen and demanded that the sides to the conflict come to the negotiating table within a month.
US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said the US had been watching the conflict “for long enough,” and that he believed Saudi Arabia and the UAE were ready for talks.
“We have got to move toward a peace effort here, and we can’t say we are going to do it sometime in the future,” he said. “We need to be doing this in the next 30 days.”
Mattis’ call was later echoed by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who urged the coalition to stop airstrikes in Yemen’s populated areas, saying the “time is now for the cessation of hostilities.”
Bakhiti further stressed that Washington’s proposed solution for the Yemen conflict included dividing the country.
Mattis’ plan, supported by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, is meant to achieve goals that have not been attained during the war on Yemen, he added.
The only solution to the crisis is intra-Yemeni talks and non-interference by foreign parties, the Houthi official said.
In March 2015, Saudi Arabia and its allies launched a brutal war against Yemen in an attempt to reinstall the country’s former Riyadh-allied regime and crush the Houthis.
The Western-backed war, however, has so far failed to achieve its stated goals, thanks to stiff resistance from Yemeni troops and allied Houthi fighters.
The offensive, coupled with a naval blockade, has destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure and led to famine as well as a cholera outbreak in the import-dependent state. Tens of thousands of people have also lost their lives in the conflict.
October 31, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation | Saudi Arabia, UAE, United States, Yemen |
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Oman says it will not act as a “mediator” between Israelis and Palestinians, playing down an earlier visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The sultanate was only offering ideas to help Israel and Palestinians to come together, Omani Foreign Minister Yousuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah told a security summit in Bahrain’s capital Manama on Saturday.
The remarks came a day after Netanyahu visited Oman in a rare visit, while accompanied by other senior Israeli officials, including the head of the Israeli spy agency Mossad.
“We are not saying road is now easy and paved with flowers, but our priority is to put an end to the conflict and move to a new world,” Reuters cited Abdullah as saying.
Despite apparently trying to sound impartial, Abdullah said Oman relied on the United States and efforts by US President Donald Trump in working towards the “deal of the century.”
The Trump administration has targeted the plan at the situation in the Palestinian territories.
Details are yet to emerge, but reports say it envisages a Palestinian state with limited sovereignty across about half of Israel-occupied West Bank and all the Gaza Strip. The deal also reportedly foresees potential disarming of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, and does not find Palestinians entitled to the eastern part of Jerusalem al-Quds as their capital.
This is while Abbas, who visited Oman before Netanyahu for three days, has renounced the plan, saying it has been devised without consulting the Palestinians. He also spurned any intermediary role by the US late last year after Washington recognized Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel’s “capital.”
In June, however, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Jordan assured the US of their support for the plan during visits to those countries by Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Jason Greenblatt, the US envoy to the region.
Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told the Manama gathering on Saturday that the kingdom believed the key to “normalizing” relations with Israel was the “peace process.”
The Omani minister also claimed Israel was “present in the region, and we all understand this, the world is also aware of this fact and maybe it is time for Israel to be treated the same and also bear the same obligations.”
Observers say Muscat has come to accommodate the US plan under pressure from Washington and Riyadh, the strongest US ally in the Persian Gulf region, which has been inching towards Tel Aviv over the past years.
Palestinian groups, however, condemned the Israeli prime minister’s visit to Oman, urging Arab countries to support the oppressed people of Palestine, instead.
Hamas warned about the dangerous consequences of Netanyahu’s visit for the people of Palestine. The Islamic Jihad movement also censured the visit, saying Oman acquitted Netanyahu of the crimes committed against innocent Palestinians by welcoming him to the country.
Commenting on Netanyahu’s visit, Paul Larudee, with the Free Palestine Movement, told PressTV, “What in the world would Netanyahu know about peace and stability, when his objectives and objectives of Israel have always been war and instability?”
“The importance is what their objectives are not. They are not about Arab unity, not about solidarity with Arabs who are suffering namely the Palestinians,” he said.
“These other countries realize that sooner or later they are potential targets of Israel… that they can be in the same place that the Palestinians are now,” Larudee said.
October 27, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Egypt, Hamas, Jordan, Middle East, Oman, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Zionism |
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In first, Israel’s Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev today arrived in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to attend the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam Judo tournament.
Regev was invited to attend the event earlier this month to accompany Israel’s national judo team as they compete in the Emirati capital. President of the International Judo Federation (IJF), Marius Vizer, wrote to Regev on 2 October to invite her to the tournament and promised to “make all the necessary arrangements for [her] visit”.
The invitation came after the IJF demanded that the UAE allow the Israeli team to play its national anthem and fly its flag during the tournament. The event had previously been threatened with cancellation after the IJF stripped the UAE of the right to host the tournament due to its failure to guarantee “equal treatment” for Israeli athletes. In September, the UAE accepted the IJF’s conditions and allowed the Israeli judoists to sport their national insignia.
Regev’s attendance at the event – which is taking place from 25-27 October – will be seen as controversial in light of the lack of official relations between Israel and the UAE. In addition, Israeli passports are not valid for travel to the UAE.
However, the UAE has recently been pursuing a policy of normalisation with Israel. In September, it hosted secret backchannel talks between Israel and Turkey in an attempt to mend strained Israeli-Turkish relations. Envoys from the two countries flew into Abu Dhabi via Amman, Jordan, though neither government would confirm the purpose of the talks.
In August, an Israeli journalist claimed that an Emirati pilot participated in the bombing of Palestinian targets in the Gaza Strip during his training on Israeli Air Force F-35 fighters. Cohen, the journalist who made the claims, also accused Dubai’s Deputy Chairman of Police and Public Security, General Dhahi Khalfan, of being complicit in assassinating Hamas leader Mahmoud Mabhouh in Dubai in 2010.
In June, an exposé by the New Yorker revealed that Israel and the UAE have been engaged in secret normalisation talks since the 1990s. The report disclosed that “the secret relationship between Israel and the UAE can be traced back to a series of meetings in a nondescript office in Washington D.C. after the signing of the Oslo Accords”. These meetings discussed the possibility of the UAE purchasing F-16 fighter jets from the US which are known to be comprised of Israeli technology. The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed Bin Zayed, also gave his blessing for delegations of influential American Jews to be brought to Abu Dhabi to meet with Emirati officials and establish an intelligence-sharing relationship.
READ: Israel, UAE envoys share dinner date
October 26, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Israel, Middle East, Palestine, UAE, Zionism |
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Those in the Western media too busy to be bothered trying to understand the complexities, intricacies and nuances of the Middle East often resort to concluding nearly all conflicts there are some kind of “proxy war” between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
This is usually out of ignorance, reducing disputes to the lowest common dominator of Sunnis versus Shiites or to that between their two most prominent patron states. Often though there is deliberate obfuscation; there must be justification for a US ally to cause regional mayhem on the pretext of containing an enemy. The easiest and most convenient scapegoat has been Iran and efforts to contain its alleged expansionism by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and of course, Israel, go unchecked.
One of the most devastating and tragic episodes occurring in the Middle East today is in Yemen. But this is not a de facto proxy war its bankrollers hope we have all grown too weary of hearing to investigate further.
Despite the constant disclaimers by a lazy media, there is no proxy war in Yemen.
The war which has ravaged the Arab world’s poorest country since March 2015 is a Saudi-led, unilateral onslaught which has so devasted the nation, its economy, infrastructure and social services that malnutrition has become widespread and cholera epidemic.
Ostensibly, the Saudi-UAE military campaign was to oust Houthi-led rebels who unseated the deeply unpopular Saudi-backed puppet-president Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi in January 2015 (elected on a ballot in which he was the only candidate and who remained in power even after the expiration of a one-year mandate that had extended his term). The Houthis, a politico-religious group officially known as Ansarullah and named after their founder, Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, initially formed in opposition to late Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
The Houthis generally belong to the Zaidi school in Islam, a branch of the larger Shiite sect. Branding the Houthis as “Iranian-backed Shiite rebels” as is now routine, makes for easy and convenient categorization of who the “bad guys” are in Western and Gulf media. But this is disingenuous. The inconvenient fact is Zaidis are generally closer to Sunni Islam than Shiite (and the longtime military, Saudi-backed dictator Saleh was Zaidi). More significantly, other than voicing solidarity with the Houthis, there has been no substantive evidence of Iranian military intervention or that of affiliated parties in Yemen. On the contrary, and starkly so, it has been the Saudi and Emirati governments’ inhumane bombing campaign which has been the most glaring example of foreign interference in the internal affairs of another country.
When a school-bus was struck during an air raid that killed 40 children, it was initially justified as a “legitimate military target” by the Saudi coalition before international outrage finally led to the conclusion it was otherwise. On the other hand, intermittent Houthi missiles launched at Saudi military installations and considered evidence of foreign military supply belie the Houthis as a legitimate, capable, battle-hardened fighting force. Apparently, the regime cannot fathom that despite daily attack, they have had the muster to retaliate and demonstrate offensive, rather than strictly defensive, capabilities.
Yemen is not a sectarian conflict or one of proxies, but a war stemming from the fallout of removing yet another Saudi-backed ruler from power.
Since 2015, at least 10,000 Yemenis have been killed, 22 million are now in need some form of relief (out of a total population of approximately 29 million) and eight million are malnourished. These numbers can only be expected to climb after evidence has shown Saudi Arabia is targeting food supplies.
The war waged in Yemen by Saudi Arabia and its allies and their wanton use of US and UK-supplied arms is everything short of a formal invasion. It is a one-sided, vicious military adventure which has rendered millions destitute and to date, has proven completely unsuccessful in fulfilling its stated objectives. The only proxies in this struggle are the victims of its war crimes; innocent men, women and children starved or killed, stand-ins for an apparition of a foreign power waiting to be found.
October 20, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Illegal Occupation, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Saudi Arabia, UAE, UK, United States, Yemen |
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A Hungarian-Israeli security contractor based in the US, Abraham Golan, has claimed he ran a targeted assassination program in Yemen as part of the Saudi-led coalition currently waging a proxy war against Iran-backed Houthis.
The US is supplying weapons, intelligence, and other support to the coalition, but Golan’s account, as told to BuzzFeed, reads like something out of a spy thriller.
Golan claims the United Arab Emirates (UAE), part of the coalition, hired his mercenary company, Spear Operations Group, to kill specific enemies, including Anssaf Ali Mayo, leader of the Yemeni political party Al-Islah, which the UAE considers a terrorist group. The Mayo assassination was ultimately unsuccessful – Mayo disappeared from Yemeni politics for a while, and the Spear crew even thought he was dead, but he is currently serving in the Yemeni government, alive and well.
The botched assassination of December 29, 2015 is seen by observers from both sides as the opening salvo in a “targeted campaign,” which former UN investigator Gregory Johnsen says eventually took out 25 to 30 members of Al-Islah and other clerics.
Golan claims responsibility for several of the high-profile assassinations in Yemen, though he refuses to share which ones. Not because of remorse – he’s a mercenary, after all – but because his business inhabits a legal gray area, and perhaps because he doesn’t want his professional secrets getting out. Golan is trying to sell his business model to the US military.
Experts have cast doubt on the idea that the US, which essentially armed and trained the UAE’s military from the ground up, didn’t know the UAE had hired Americans to conduct assassinations in a war in which the US is deeply involved. The CIA claimed ignorance of the matter, but one agency official – after categorically denying the government would allow such a thing – confirmed the story, himself shocked that American mercenaries had been allowed to operate “almost like a murder squad.”
The US does enjoy a privileged place within UAE military circles, having sold the Arab nation $27 billion in arms and defense services since 2009. While the US theoretically bars mercenaries from participating in combat, it hires them to do everything else in the military, and one man’s security detail is another man’s firefight.
Private contractors are supposed to be regulated by the State Department, which claims it has never permitted mercenaries to work for another government, and US law forbids any who would “conspire to kill, kidnap, [or] maim” a foreign citizen. But the publication cites multiple sources who claim Spear mercenaries were given military rank by the UAE, providing them legal cover for their actions (US citizens are allowed to serve in foreign militaries, with some exceptions).
BuzzFeed was admittedly unable to verify much of Golan’s biography, which allegedly includes a stint in the French Foreign Legion and friendships with notorious figures like former Mossad head Danny Yatom and Serbian militant Arkan. A CIA acquaintance calls him “prone to exaggeration.” The details of his story – “target cards” handed out with names, photographs, even phone numbers; a Jolly-Roger-esque company flag – are Hollywoodesque.
Golan supposedly offered the UAE his company’s services as targeted assassins, explicitly tasked to “disrupt and destruct” Al-Islah. On top of $1.5 million a month, they would receive kill bonuses and train UAE soldiers. He claims to have declined missions targeting individuals outside the party, but those claims are unverified, and his partner admits that some targets may have simply been enemies of the UAE’s ruling family.
However much truth there may be to Golan’s tale, it illuminates the consequences of War on Terror mission creep – an overabundance of highly-trained special forces, lax oversight regarding war crimes and international law, an increasingly privatized fighting force, and the notion that enemy combatants are anyone a government deems them to be mean Spear’s business model could strike US commanders’ fancy after all.
October 17, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | UAE, United States, Yemen |
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The United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia’s key partner in the ongoing Riyadh-led invasion of Yemen, has reportedly been recruiting tribesmen from northern and central parts of Africa to fight in the war.
The campaign features Emirati envoys “seducing” the tribesmen across a vast area spanning southern Libya as well as entire Chad and Niger, who earn a living by herding as well as human and material smuggling, the Middle East Monitor (MEMO) press monitoring organization reported on Wednesday.
“This campaign is supervised by Emirati officials who gained material profits in collaboration with human traffickers,” the report added.
An awareness campaign has been launched by Chadian activists, led by campaigner Mohamed Zain Ibrahim, to warn the tribesmen against joining the Saudi-led war.
“The Arabs of the [Persian] Gulf region, especially the UAE and Saudi Arabia, have never bothered to get to know the Arabs of the desert, and today they are asking for their support and seducing them to fight by their side in Yemen!” MEMO cited Ibrahim as telling pan-Arab Arabi21 electronic newspaper.
The envoys offer potential mercenaries such incentives as sums ranging from $900 to $3,000, in addition to acquiring UAE citizenship in return for their applying for jobs in Emirati security companies.
Ibrahim said the job opportunities were “an actual military recruitment campaign to gather mercenaries for the Yemeni war and use them to fight the people of Yemen, who are Arabs and Muslims as well, and all that for a bunch of dollars.”
“A delegation of Emirati people in business visited Niger in January 2018, where they met Arab tribal leaders and recruited 10,000 tribesmen living between Libya, Chad, and Niger,” MEMO said.
The Emirates has been contributing heavily to the 2015-present war, which seeks to reinstall Yemen’s former Saudi-allied officials.
In addition to their own forces, both Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have deployed thousands of militants across the violence-scarred country to intensify the invasion.
The Emirati side began beefing up its contribution in June, when the coalition launched a much-criticized offensive against al-Hudaydah, Yemen’s key port city, which receives the bulk of its imports.
October 3, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, War Crimes | Africa, Chad, Libya, Niger, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Yemen |
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