by Mitchell Plitnick
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met with US President Barack Obama this week, following in the footsteps of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier in the month. But unlike Netanyahu, Abbas is a much less heralded or even well-known figure in Washington. And, above all, he is a [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met with US President Barack Obama this week, following in the footsteps of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier in the month. But unlike Netanyahu, Abbas is a much less heralded or even well-known figure in Washington. And, above all, he is a man with far fewer options.
With a deadline looming at the end of April by which US Secretary of State John Kerry had promised first to broker a permanent Israel-Palestine agreement and, later, a more modest goal of a framework for continuing talks, Abbas arrived in Washington with little to offer and less room to make further concessions. It’s a familiar position for the Palestinian leader, one he has been in since 2004 when he assumed the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) upon the death of Yasir Arafat.
Arafat was a universally respected leader to the Palestinian people, even, grudgingly, among his rivals; a fighter who had proven his worth in conflict. Abbas, by contrast, had long been Arafat’s number two, but he was more intellectual, having been an advocate, a resistance politician and a fundraiser for most of his time in exile and then after his return to the Palestinian Territories in 1994.
Abbas was watching the West Bank disappear inch by inch even well before he took office, while, since 2006, he has seen Gaza grow even more impoverished under Israel’s siege while Hamas manages what little there is to run internally. In recent years, he has faced political infighting in Fatah, from both a new generation of activists and older rivals like Mohammed Dahlan, who is currently trying once again to make a comeback. Abbas has consistently been under siege himself, and has stuck fast to his credo of diplomatic, rather than violent, responses to Israeli actions. He is no Gandhi; he simply understands that violence is not an arena where the Palestinians are likely to win.
But Abbas has handicaps of his own, beyond the political, economic, social, and military impediments any Palestinian leader would face. He is dogged, as was Arafat, by the corruption in the Palestinian Authority and by the sense that has been building since the mid-1990s among Palestinians that the PA in general is a tool of Israel and the United States; administering the occupation in the major and mid-size Palestinian cities, thus relieving Israel of much of that burden, while being a “partner for peace” rather than an advocate for the Palestinian cause.
Abbas feels the weight of these much more powerfully because he does not have anything like the prestige Arafat had. Yet he shares some of Arafat’s weaknesses in his dealings with Israeli and US politics and how that plays out in the negotiations that drag on year after year, when they are held at all. An example emerged as he left Washington this week.
The Israelis have been making noises about the next and final release of prisoners that they agreed to last year, as a way to restart negotiations. Some members of the Israeli government (crucially, not including Prime Minister Netanyahu) are saying that the prisoner release will not happen unless Abbas agrees to a framework agreement. The prisoner release is slated to occur a full month before the deadline Kerry imposed on the framework agreement.
Abbas, not surprisingly, urged Israel to complete the prisoner release, “…because this will give a very solid impression about the seriousness of these efforts to achieve peace.” In the wake of that statement, even the so-called “moderate” Tzipi Livni, Israeli’s Minister of Justice who is leading negotiations with the Palestinians, reiterated the conditioning of the release on Abbas’ agreement to the framework.
Abbas unwittingly helped the Israelis set him up. No one in Israel or the Occupied Territories believes Kerry’s effort is going to lead to an agreement, even if he can ram his framework through and extend the talks beyond the end of April. For months now, Israeli and Palestinian leaders have been jockeying to avoid being blamed for what they know is the inevitable failure of Kerry’s efforts. Abbas handed this round to Israel on a platter.
Netanyahu can now show the world that, by Abbas’ own standard, he is ready to make the “painful choices” for peace by releasing Palestinian prisoners “with blood on their hands” in order to keep the talks alive, even fighting his own people to do it.
Can Abbas do likewise? It seems unlikely, unless the framework won’t include Palestinian recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state” (the Palestinians long ago recognized Israel’s right to exist, which is all any state recognizes in any other state). That is something Netanyahu has insisted on and, though downplayed lately by Kerry, it is a position the United States has accepted.
Indeed, Netanyahu laid bare this strategy when, on Tuesday, he called on his ministers and Likud leaders to refrain from making statements that would make Israel appear to be the intransigent party in the talks. It was, in fact, in response to a question about the release of Palestinian prisoners that Netanyahu responded with this: “At this very moment it is becoming clear that the Palestinians are the balkers. Instead of disinclination, we should be demonstrating willingness. I suggest that now we let everybody realize who the reluctant one is, and let this perception take root in the international community.”
Netanyahu may be well off the mark regarding “this moment,” but he has never really been concerned about the international community. He is concerned about the United States. He is well aware that if he can create a narrative, as Ehud Barak did after the failure of the Camp David II talks, where Israel is willing to go along with the US peacemaking plan and the Palestinians refuse, he will win US and Congressional opinion, and with it at least parts of Europe and other key countries. And Abbas gave him the opening to do it.
Mahmoud Abbas is not Yasir Arafat, and it could well be argued that neither of these two very different men was the right one for the job of trying to win Palestinian freedom from Israeli domination. But both played their part in crafting a strategy that depended on the Unites States. Abbas has spoken of moving to the international arena if talks fail. But if he does, he is likely paving the way for the next Palestinian leader to take the stage and try it his way.
]]>The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) initially released this statement on Tuesday morning:
A short while ago, IDF Navy fighters intercepted the cargo vessel “Victoria” loaded with various weaponry. According to assessments, the weaponry on-board the vessel was intended for the use of terror organizations operating in the Gaza Strip. The vessel, flying under a Liberian flag, was intercepted some 200 miles west of Israel’s coast. This incident was part of the Navy’s routine activity to maintain security and prevent arms smuggling, in light of IDF security assessments.
The force was met with no resistance from the crew on-board and the vessel is now being led by the Israeli Navy to the Israeli port in Ashdod for further searches and detailed inspection of the cargo.
The vessel was on its way from Mersin Port in Turkey to Alexandria Port in Egypt. The IDF would like to note that Turkey is not tied to the incident in any way.
The operation was approved as necessary in accordance with government directives in light of the Chief of the General Staff’s recommendations.
This press release isn’t just about finding hidden weapons on a ship, and exculpating the crew and the country of Turkey. It’s a declaration that Israel considers its maritime domain to extend 200 nautical miles or more beyond its Mediterranean coastline. Within it, Israel claims the right to board, inspect, intercept and impound the cargo ships of other nations at will–a unilateral Mediterranean Monroe Doctrine of sorts.
One of the reasons that forcible boarding and seizure of the Mavi Marmara — the lead ship in the flotilla that attempted to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza Strip last May to deliver humanitarian aid — was so controversial because Israeli naval commandos had raided the convoy when its ships were 40 miles out at sea, in international waters. In a Washington Post article by Colum Lynch last June, Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, cited the San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflict at Sea in support of Israel’s right to enforce its blockade of Gaza, and “to intercept even on the high seas, even in international waters.”
Anthony D’Amato, a professor of International Law at Northwestern University School of Law disagreed, challenging Regev’s interpretation and declaring the raid on the Gaza flotilla an illegal challenge to the principle of “freedom of the seas.” D’Amato said the laws of war between states didn’t apply between Israel and Hamas, which is not even a state. Phyllis Bennis, of the Institute for Policy Studies, noted that “Israel is now claiming a new international law, invented just for this purpose: the preventive ‘right’ to capture any naval vessel in international waters if the ship was about to violate a blockade.”
The interdiction of the Victoria takes this claim even further. Israel is now testing its right to seize a cargo vessel of a neutral country 200 miles off its coastline, whose destination (Egypt) is not subject to Israel’s blockade. It claims this right on grounds that the ship’s cargo is weapons that might eventually be smuggled into Gaza. It’s particularly helpful if Israel can demonstrate that Iran is behind the arms shipment, since UN Security Council Resolution 1747 prohibits Iran from supplying, selling or transferring arms to other states. While Israel generally takes a dim view of UN resolutions that apply to itself, it takes UN resolutions against Iran far more seriously, having just announced it will file a complaint with the UNSC about the Victoria’s clandestine cargo.
In the process, Israel can claim it is doing the world a favor by helping to enforce a UN resolution.
The initial IDF announcement of the seizure of the Victoria and its cargo didn’t mention Iran, but the identification of Iran as the source of the cache of weapons quickly became the focus of subsequent Israeli news releases and press reports. Military spokesman Brig. Gen. Avi Benayahu offered a teaser when he told Israeli Army Radio that Syria’s fingerprints were all over the shipment, predicting Israel will “find more evidence of the Iran, Syria, Hezbollah axis.”
Shortly afterwards, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared, “We are currently collecting information and the one thing that is certain is that the weapons are from Iran with a relay station in Syria.”
The evidence?
Rear Admiral Rani Ben Yehuda initially hinted that it might be more than coincidental that the Syrian weapons shipment had occurred shortly after two Iranian vessels had transited the Suez Canal en route to Syria in late February:
Just days before the cargo was loaded aboard the ship, two Iranian warships crossed the Suez Canal for the first time since the 1979 revolution. Ben-Yehuda said that he did not know if the Iranian ships brought the weaponry that was loaded onto the Victoria but that the timing raises serious questions.
“This needs to be considered,” he said.
So let’s consider it: Two Iranian warships transited the Suez Canal, for the first time in 32 years, on February 22. The Israeli Deputy Naval Commander suggests that, bypassing the Sinai peninsula, the ships transported Iranian arms to Syria. Those arms were to be shipped back to northern Egypt, past an Israeli naval blockade in the Mediterranean, so they could be smuggled into Gaza. Then the ships sailed back in early March, passing the Sinai coast and again transiting the Suez Canal. Hmmm….Sounds more like “the gang that couldn’t shoot straight” than “the most dangerous nation on earth.”
Among the weapons reportedly found aboard the Victoria were C-704 anti-ship missiles. Ben-Yehuda initially said,“The missile is made in China and it is in the possession of the Iranians, and this adds to suspicions that it came from Iran.” The Jerusalem Post‘s newly re-headlined piece, “Navy Intercepts Iranian Weapons Bound for Hamas“, on Wednesday stated that among the weapons were C-740s with “Nasr 1 written on them,” noting that “Nasr is what Iran calls the missile.” Although Iran opened a factory last spring to mass produce Nasr-1 missiles, which are identical to the Chinese C-704s, it wasn’t until Thursday morning that Adm. Eliezer Marom stated that the C-704s had been made in Iran.
But on Wednesday, Ben Yehuda was still basing the claim of Iranian responsibility for the arms shipment on the accompanying how-to manuals, which were written in Persian:
…guidebooks in Farsi had been found on the ship, along with other symbols of the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, another indication that the Victoria was an Iranian attempt to shift the order of power in the Middle East.
Exactly what use Arabic-speaking Gazans would have had for Persian language manuals is unclear. Farsi is written in Arabic characters, but is otherwise unintelligible to a reader who only knows Arabic.
The IDF also asserted that “the identification document for the anti-ship missiles was in Persian and contained emblems of the Iranian government throughout…This incident further demonstrates Iranian and Syrian involvement in strengthening and arming terror organizations in the Gaza Strip and elsewhere.” Again, if true, not very smart!
Foreign correspondents invited by the IDF to view Victoria’s secret” cargo Wednesday morning were apparently unimpressed, especially after being held up at a security checkpoint for over an hour before being allowed to view the Victoria’s clandestine cargo. According to Y-Net, 30 reporters and photographers “left the Ashdod Port outraged.”
Is Iran involved in arms smuggling? It’s quite possible that it is. But like the previous interceptions of the Francop and the Karine A, the Victoria interception coincides with pressure on Israel to move forward in making peace with the Palestinians by creating a Palestinian state. All three interception narratives attest to Israeli determination to keep its tensions with Iran front and center on the stage of world events, regardless of what else is happening, in order to explain why peace with the Palestinians can’t and won’t happen.
But the ho-hum quality of the interception narratives, and the yawns they are beginning to elicit, should not be allowed to distract from Israel’s increasingly radical reinterpretations of international law, which it justifies with the specter of “the Iranian threat.” That’s Victoria’s real secret.
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