The international community made a mistake in allowing the Taliban to exclude the voices of women and civil society in a recent meeting in Doha.

By Tarique Niazi | –

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – The United Nations recently hosted a third round of talks on Afghanistan in Doha, Qatar, to weigh the prospects for the country’s return to the international system. The talks were attended by special envoys on Afghanistan from 30 world nations, including the United States. That the world’s 30 leading nations have appointed “special envoys” on Afghanistan shows how concerning Afghanistan is to the globe. The UN sponsored the earlier two rounds in May 2023 and February 2024. Doha I and Doha II were, however, focused on the international obligations of Afghanistan’s de facto rulers, i.e., the Taliban regime.

The Taliban boycotted Doha I and Doha II, dismissing the “international obligations” as interference in Afghanistan’s internal affairs. Also, they refused to attend Doha III until the UN dropped human and women rights from its agenda, and barred Afghan women and civil society organization leaders from attending the talks. This capitulation is a step toward accepting the Taliban as the sole and legitimate representative of Afghanistan that they are not. The Taliban further snubbed the UN and participating countries by sending a delegation led by a low-level official, a government spokesperson, instead of their minister for foreign affairs.

To be fair, cutting and pruning the agenda around the Taliban’s demands was not an easy decision for the UN or special envoys to swallow. There is every indication that the decision irked UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who earlier attended Doha I and Doha II, enough to abstain from Doha III. Many others were dismayed by the decision. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women was “deeply concerned” about the exclusion that it said “will only further silence Afghan women and girls.”

Human Rights Watch found the decision “shocking.” The Afghan Representative at the United Nations, who does not represent the de facto Taliban regime in Kabul and is a holdover from the pre-Taliban Afghan government, was “disappointed” at the decision. He urged the world to hold the Taliban to their international obligation of forming an inclusive and representative government in Afghanistan, engage with all Afghan stakeholders, not just the Taliban, and not look away from human rights violations in Afghanistan.

The U.S. Special Envoy on Afghanistan, speaking at the UN Security Council, lamented that “the harm caused by the Taliban’s restrictions on women and girls cannot be overstated,” noting “that it has now been over 1,000 days since it banned girls from secondary schools.” Yet he seemed more concerned with “Afghanistan’s reintegration into an international system,” and having the UN appoint a “focal point to begin producing a road map” to this effect.

The world, nonetheless, stays united refusing to recognize the Taliban government in the face of their misanthropic and misogynistic policies, which ban girls from seeking an education beyond sixth grade and women from employment even in women-only establishments and organizations. Even diverse nations such as China, India, Iran, Russia, and the United States speak with one voice. More importantly, the UN has refused to accept the Taliban regime as a de jure government that has been constituted and propped up against the will of the Afghans, and with the muscular power of a militia force, i.e., the Taliban.

DW News Video: “Outrage over women’s exclusion from UN-led talks with Taliban | DW News”

The global call on the Taliban to end their misogyny has not gone unheeded, though. There is now a growing chorus of voices, both loud and quiet, within the Taliban regime that wants the ban on female education lifted. One such voice is that of the Taliban’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Stanikzai, who initially was tipped to be the country’s prime minister but got pushed aside because of his outspokenness. He has long been challenging his government’s ban on female education, arguing that Islam makes it obligatory for both men and women to get an education. He calls the ban on women and girls’ education “oppressive and unjust.”

Quieter voices also oppose the ban, prominent among them the ministers for defense and the interior, who see the ban as inconsistent with international norms. Defense Minister Yaqoob Mujahid’s dissent carries greater weight because of his heritage. He is a son of the founder of the Taliban Movement, Mullah Omar, and is widely respected by the rank and file of the movement. So is Sirajuddin Haqqani, the minister for the interior, whose father Jalaluddin Haqqani is credited with crafting military strategies that, years later, paved the way for the Taliban’s return to power.

Who is, then, opposed to women and girls’ right to education and work? It is the Taliban’s Supreme Leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, who is a recluse, hermit, blinkered, bigoted and inveterate misogynist with zero formal education, except for a few years of undistinguished religious instruction. Unlike many world scholars of Islam, Akhundzada has never traveled outside of  his birth country of Afghanistan and the remote village in neighboring Pakistan where he was in exile. This insularity has turned him into a literalist reader of religious texts. His medieval interpretations of Islam are rejected by every single Muslim religious scholar, including the world’s largest Islamic movement of Nahdatul Ulema in Indonesia, which boasts 100 million members.

Similarly, religious scholars in Cairo, Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia rebuffed Akhundzada’s orthodox reading of Islam. This universal repudiation has further turned him inward. He now refuses to meet with any visiting Islamic scholars. In parallel, he claims it is Pashtun culture, not necessarily religion, that doesn’t permit women to learn or work outside the home.

This citation of Pashtun culture did appeal to some. In 2021, Pakistan’s then Prime Minister Imran Khan, whose ancestors hail from Ghazni and Kandahar in Afghanistan, echoed Akhundzada’s position and urged the world to be understanding of Pashtun culture that discourages women’s education. His ambassador at the UN defended this stance saying that the Taliban’s ban on women’s education is part of Pashtun culture, which created a huge backlash. Afghanistan’s former President Hamid Karzai admonished Imran Kahn for peddling ignorance about Afghan culture. Afghan women, however, fared best under the Afghan communist regime (1979-1989), when 60% of university students in the country were women. The second best era for them was in 2001-2021, when 25% of university students were women.

If Pashtun culture were to blame for opposing women’s education, then Pashtun women in Pakistan would not be studying in co-ed schools, colleges, and universities. The Nobel laureate Malala Yousufzai, who risked her life for education, is a Pashtun. The 50 million Pashtuns in Pakistan outnumber the entire population of Afghanistan. Pakistani Pashtuns should be the true north of Pashtun culture, not Mullah Akhundzada.

Tragically, Afghanistan has fallen into the hands of those who are impervious to rational thought. Millions of Afghans have been fleeing their irrationality. Since 2021, 700,000 Afghans have sought refuge in neighboring Pakistan alone. How to stop Afghanistan from bleeding its best and brightest? All overseas Afghan assets, including the $7 billion that the United States has frozen since 2021, should be released only to Afghan women for their education. Any Afghan woman living inside or outside the country seeking higher education should be entitled to these funds. There are around 12,000 universities in India, Indonesia and the United States alone. If each of these universities offers one spot for them, 12,000 Afghan women can graduate every year. With an investment of just $7 billion, a million Afghan women can receive university education. This should be a realistic way to counter Taliban misogyny.

Unfortunately, the international community has provided the Taliban regime with $10 billion in “international aid and civilian support” since 2021, with zero accountability or transparency. The UN must engage with the Taliban to have them be accountable, transparent, meet their international obligations, and most importantly further women’s interests, i.e., their right to education, work, and public life. If the Taliban are responsive, they should be welcomed into the world community; if not, they should be shunned until they renounce their antiquated ideas. The Doha III meeting that shut out civil society and women’s voices was a nod to Taliban misogyny. This mistake needs to be undone, and soon.

Via Foreign Policy in Focus

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi died on May 19 while returning from a ceremony to inaugurate a hydropower project in a remote corner of northwestern Iran. Why would a head of state brave the hazardous conditions of unseasonal blizzards in a mountainous region to open a run-of-the-mill water and power project? Why not send his minister for energy to stand in for him? Why was the project so important as to even invite the head of state of neighboring Azerbaijan, which had only three months ago shut down its embassy in Tehran to protest a violent attack on its staff?

The answer: climate change.

As much as 97 percent of Iran suffers from a 30-year drought. Droughts are  exacerbated by two major factors: a dramatic drop in precipitation and an evaporation driven by scorching temperatures. On average, Iran receives 250 millimeters of rain a year, which is close to one-third of the global average. Yet two-thirds of Iran’s average precipitation evaporates each year. Certain spatial and temporal variations in rainfall patterns leave much of the country vulnerable to drought.

True to these variations, Iran’s Caspian Sea basin is the wettest of all with rainfall as high as 1,600 millimeters per year. Yet climate-induced water scarcity and evaporation of moisture in other parts of the country are exacting a heavy toll on Iran’s already dwindling water resources. A case in point is the agriculture sector, which now guzzles 93 percent of national freshwater supplies. Scarcity of water has become the catalyst of climate-induced drought that Raisi was combatting with the opening of dam and hydropower projects.

No Iranian president had been more proactively responding to climate-induced scarcity in the country than Raisi. His “water diplomacy” was meant to elevate relations with neighboring states—such as Azerbaijan and Armenia, which share transboundary waterways—to a “special level.” The imperative to secure water resources put Iran on the side of Christian Armenia against Muslim Azerbaijan during their 30-year violent conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. In response, Azerbaijan sought help from Israel and Turkey, which provided Baku with heavy artillery, rocket launchers, and attack drones, especially for the final push in September 2023 that left Azerbaijan in control of all of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Press Service of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan: Hours before his death, President Raisi with his Azeri counterpart, inaugurating the Giz Galasi hydropower project that straddles the border between Azerbaijan and Iran.

Now that Azerbaijan controls Nagorno-Karabakh, Iran’s water diplomacy has spun to Baku. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei sent his “personal emissary” to the inaugural ceremony of the hydropower plant on May 19 to meet with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev. Khamenei described Azeris as “Iran’s kin,” an elevation of “special relations” to a shared genealogy. Khamenei himself is of Azeri descent, and Azeri-Iranians make up the country’s largest ethnic minority.

Why has Iran switched sides from Armenia to Azerbaijan in the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh? The answer, again, lies in the hydrological wealth of the region.

Nagorno-Karabakh is home to eight major rivers, three of which feed into the Kura River, and five into Aras River (see the map below). The Kura and Aras are the largest bodies of water in all of southern Caucasus. Both rivers merge before their united stream empties into the Caspian Sea. The Aras, which rises in Turkey, supplies Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Iran with their freshwater needs. To harvest this water, the Nagorno-Karabakh region is crisscrossed with four major dams and 33 hydropower plants. Since September 2023, all of this hydrological treasure has come under the sovereign control of Azerbaijan, prompting Iran’s realignment.

Credit: Wikipedia: The Kura-Aras Basin

Giz Galasi, a hydropower project on the Aras River, took heavily sanctioned Iran 18 long years to build. The project sits astride the border between Azerbaijan and Iran, which is why Raisi had invited his Azeri counterpart on the fateful day of May 19 to the inaugural ceremony. For his part, Aliyev extended a personal invitation to Raisi to attend COP29, the climate summit that Baku will host this November. Both presidents considered the completion of the Giz Galasi project an important step toward building renewable reservoirs of energy and water.

Before the project was inaugurated, Raisi repaired his country’s ruptured relations with Azerbaijan. The violent attack on the Azeri embassy in Tehran on January 27, was agreed to be the result of a misunderstanding. Aliyev echoed this position, asserting that “no one could create misunderstanding between two neighbors.” Meanwhile, Azerbaijan announced its intention to build its embassy in the more secure location that Tehran allotted it. In the interim, Baku agreed to reopen its diplomatic mission in the old building. This rapprochement enabled the two leaders to preside over the inaugural ceremony for the Giz Galasi hydropower project.

These renewed relations will now allow Azerbaijan to have access to the Autonomous Republic of Nakhchivan, which is entirely located within Armenia and is thus completely inaccessible from mainland Azerbaijan. Baku can access it either through Armenia or Iran. Damaged by the 30-year conflict, Azeri-Armenian relations will take years to mend before such access is even contemplated. That is why Azerbaijan is responsive to Iran’s friendly overtures to have uninterrupted access to its only autonomous republic, where the Giz Galasi hydropower project is located. Iran shares 27 miles of borders with Armenia and Nakhchivan.

Thanks to climate change, southeastern Iran suffers triple-digit summer temperatures and ever hotter and drier weather. Much of southeastern Iran borders Afghanistan and Pakistan. Afghanistan and Iran share a major transboundary waterway, the Helmand River, which rises in the Hindu Kush and traverses hundreds of miles downstream, across Afghanistan, before it drains into Lake Hamoun in Iran. The distribution of Helmand waters is governed by a bilateral water treaty that Afghanistan and Iran signed in 1973, which allows Iran 850 million cubic meters of water in “normal” years. Defining “normal,” however, has always been contentious.

Since the change of government in Kabul in 2021, Iran has been extremely unhappy with its share of the Helmand, which it says has dropped to a trickle. It blames this decline on the massive damming of the river. Raisi expressed his government’s determination “to defend Iran’s water rights” on May 18, 2023, exactly a year before his death. “Mark my words,” he warned  the incumbent rulers of Afghanistan, “we will not allow the rights of our people to be violated in any way.”

This choice of words was out of character for Raisi, who was known for mild manners and soft speech. Here his water diplomacy didn’t stop “at the water’s edge.” Kabul, nonetheless, did heed his words, and attributed the low flow in the river to climate change. Raisi refused to buy this explanation. He demanded  that “Afghanistan’s rulers should allow our experts to come and check the truth of the matter.” Eventually, Iranian experts did visit various sites on the Helmand to determine whether the downstream low flow was due to declining snowmelt and decreasing rainfall. Despite this back and forth, the conflict continues to fester.

The day Raisi died, southeastern Iran was scorching, with temperatures as high as 107 degrees. His plane, meanwhile, was fighting the snowy headwinds of the unseasonal blizzards in the northwest, which eventually brought him down. These climate realities should prompt Washington to rethink its geopolitical priorities in the region. Regional alignments and realignments, especially among Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iran, are not so much driven by geopolitics as by very localized material concerns exacerbated by rapid climate change and dwindling water resources.

Yet geopolitical concerns continue to dominate policymaking. For instance, the United States and Europe are wary of the emerging alliance between Azerbaijan and Iran, especially the opening of a route to Nakhchivan through Iran. Also, the United States was quick to condemn the attack on the Azeri embassy in Tehran, reminding Iran of its responsibilities under the Vienna Convention, even as Azerbaijan was already turning the page on the incident. In the Azeri-Armenian conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, Iran and the United States sided with Armenia, but it didn’t make them allies. On the other hand, Israel and Turkey supported Azerbaijan, and yet they continue to be Western allies. This shows the limits to geopolitics, especially when it comes to national interests, climate imperatives, and critical resources such as water. The Iranian president took this lesson to his grave.

 

Tarique Niazi

Tarique Niazi teaches environmental sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire and can be reached via email: niazit@uwec.edu.

Via Foreign Policy in Focus

Despite the efforts of the Council of Guardians, the race to replace Raisi will still be competitive.

By Abolghasem Bayyenat | –

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Iran is set to hold extraordinary presidential elections in about two weeks following the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash in northwestern Iran last month. Out of a list of 80 presidential nominees, the Council of Guardians, which is in charge of vetting presidential and parliamentary nominees, has approved the credentials of six, mostly conservative, candidates. The Council has barred several prominent political figures—former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former parliament speaker Ali Larijani, and former reformist vice-president Eshaq Jahangiri—from the race. Despite disqualifying many serious presidential hopefuls, the Council of Guardians’ electoral engineering has not rendered Iran’s presidential election entirely meaningless. Although a far cry from a level playing field, the ballot allows for some level of political competition, so that many Iranian voters can find their next-to-favorite candidates in the race.

Three of the existing six candidates on the ballot can be considered serious contestants or frontrunners, representing different segments of Iran’s political landscape. The current parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf is a pragmatic conservative politician with decades of mostly executive political career, such as a Revolutionary Guards commander, police chief, Tehran’s mayor, and parliamentary speaker, under his belt. Saeed Jalili is a former chief nuclear negotiator under Ahmadinejad and a current appointed member of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, who can be identified as an ideological conservative politician. Being a relatively new public political figure, Jalili lacks Ghalibaf’s executive political credentials but curries favor with puritan revolutionary fringes of Iran’s conservative political camp. Finally, Masood Pezeshkian is a long-time reformist member of the Iranian parliament and a former health minister under reformist president Mohammad Khatami. Being a low-profile and non-charismatic reformist politician, Pezeshkian faces an uphill battle to mobilize his reformist bases in the upcoming election.

Given that none of the presidential candidates enjoys overwhelming public support, the election is likely to lead to a runoff between two of the three frontrunners. Ghalibaf appears to wield an edge over his other two main competitors as he enjoys backing among mainstream conservative political groups and non-ideological grassroots as his recent election as parliament speaker also testifies. Jalili, by contrast, represents a fringe segment of the conservative political camp and appears too revolutionary for traditional conservatives’ political taste.

In the absence of any broad-based mobilization of reformist and secular bases of the Iranian electorate, Pezeshkian is also unlikely to mount an effective challenge to Ghalibaf’s electoral ambitions. Although many reformist political groups and politicians, including former reformist president Mohammad Khatami, have declared their support for Pezeshkian in recent days, given the disillusionment of many reformist and secular voters with Iran’s political and electoral systems in recent years, they will not likely turn out in high numbers at the polls. The barring of key reformist and centrist politicians from the race by the Council of Guardians has further alienated many citizens from the upcoming elections. Pezeshkian’s ethnic Azeri affiliation is also not expected to translate into any significant voter mobilization since ideological and political divisions are far more salient than ethnic cleavages in Iranian national elections. This is mainly due to the fact that, as in most other Iranian provinces, ethnic and political cleavages do not reinforce each other in Azeri-speaking provinces, a fact that diminishes the political salience of ethnicity in Iranian national elections in those areas.

Al Jazeera English Video: “Iran presidential candidates discuss economy in first of five televised debates”

Although Ghalibaf enjoys better odds of winning Iran’s upcoming presidential race in a possible runoff, the election outcome is in no way predetermined, and there are real chances of electoral surprises down the road, given the changing momentum of electoral campaigns as Iran’s past elections have proven. Apart from which candidate is more likely to win the upcoming election, a more important question may be what implication the electoral victory of each of the three frontrunners entails for Iran’s foreign policy, especially its position on its contested nuclear program.

In the absence of other favorable conditions, a change in Iran’s executive chief alone does not bring drastic reorientation in Iranian foreign policy. Given the fragmentation of Iran’s political system, diffusion of political power among various power centers, the balancing role and special authority of Iran’s supreme leader, and the need for consensus-building among key national political authorities on pivotal foreign policy issues, continuity rather than revolutionary change is more the norm within Iran’s political system.

However, when other favorable conditions are present, a change in executive leadership can be a catalyst for major foreign policy change in Iran, as the electoral victory of Hassan Rouhani in 2013 and the successful conclusion of Iran’s nuclear talks with the West in 2015 suggest. As a moderate and pragmatic politician who enjoyed the political support of reformist and centrist political groups and figures, Rouhani ran on an electoral platform of settling the international dispute over Iran’s nuclear program and securing the removal of economic sanctions on the country. As such, the foreign policy preferences of an Iranian president and his supporting coalition can make all the difference when it comes to assessing the implications of a change in executive leadership for Iranian foreign policy. Among the current frontrunners, Saeed Jalili is considered least amenable to a compromise on Iran’s core foreign policy interests. This can be inferred not only from his foreign policy views and national identity conceptions but also his stewardship of Iran’s nuclear talks from 2007 to 2013.

As a reformist candidate, Pezeshkian is in principle most open to compromise on Iran’s foreign policy disputes. Much like other Iranian moderate and reformist politicians, he is expected to advocate a more prudent and less confrontational foreign policy in tune with reformist politicians’ balanced conception of the ideological, economic, and national security interests of the state.

Since he is a pragmatic conservative politician, Ghalibaf’s foreign policy preferences fall between the two extremes of ideological conservatives and moderate reformists. He does not advocate the strategic reorientation of Iranian foreign policy as a reformist politician might do. But he would also not be as uncompromising and inflexible as an ideological and revolutionary conservative politician. On a personality level, throughout his political career Ghalibaf has presented himself as more of a realistic problem-solver than a political ideologue. Given his personality and political worldview as a pragmatic conservative politician, Ghalibaf is expected to be open to tactical leniency on specific foreign policy issues without challenging the strategic orientation of Iranian foreign policy at large. These foreign policy orientations are more in harmony with the preferences of Iran’s supreme leader and the national security establishment than those of a reformist and an ideological conservative president as the history of Iran’s foreign policy making over the past several decades has demonstrated.

Overall, given that other necessary conditions for a major foreign policy shift are currently not present, whichever of the three frontrunner presidential candidates wins Iran’s upcoming election, Iranian foreign policy will remain roughly the same in the foreseeable future, though perhaps with some tactical leniency and stylistic changes. Foreign Policy in Focus

Abolghasem Bayyenat is currently a Farzaneh family postdoctoral fellow in Iranian studies at the University of Oklahoma. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow in nuclear security at Harvard University. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the dynamics of Iran’s nuclear policymaking at Syracuse University.       

National impunity is not inevitable, at least if people and governments of the world are willing to take the necessary actions.

( Foreign Policy in Focus) -In the face of an increasingly terrible conflict, political leaders, academic scholars, engaged officials, and media experts tend to explain how the conflict arose and is escalating badly. This has the effect of making the conflict appear inevitable and insurmountable short of totally defeating the adversary. Such thinking is evident in many of the current disorders in the United States and in many other countries. Such tendencies unfortunately fuel the intensity and gravity of the Israeli-Hamas war. Less attention tends to be given to constructive alternatives.

Fortunately, there are alternative approaches, deeds. and consequences. Attention might be given to what various actors might have done or failed to do to avert or transform tragic conflicts. These alternatives can point to ways of averting escalation and transforming the conflict constructively. In this way, some officials, non-governmental intermediaries, critics, and conflict resolution workers can eventually succeed in transforming tragic conflicts.

For example, consider the transformation of the Israeli-Egyptian conflict. In 1970, Egyptian President Gamal Nasser died, and Vice President Anwar El Sadat became president. In 1973, Sadat led Arab nations to another defeat in a war against Israel. Consequently, Israel took control of the Sinai peninsula. Sadat began to envision a different path to retrieving the Sinai. He reduced his dependence on the Soviet Union and improved his ties with the United States. In 1974, Yitzhak Rabin succeeded Golda Meier as the Israeli prime minister. Then in June 1977, Menachem Begin became the newly elected Israeli prime minister.

Majority Report with Sam Seder: “Jewish Voice For Peace Grows In North Carolina”

In a surprising gesture, Sadat flew to Jerusalem and spoke to the Israeli Knesset in November 1977.  Despite this, Israeli-Egyptian negotiations regarding an Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai failed again and again, including Jimmy Carter’s efforts in 1978 at Camp David. Finally, during Carter’s presidency, Henry Kissinger undertook mediation between the Egyptian and Israeli governments. Three agreements were reached for partial Israeli withdrawals from the Sinai, with UN monitoring. In March 1979, Egyptian and Israeli leaders signed a Treaty of Peace that endures. Egypt regained the Sinai, and Israel is secure from Egyptian military attack.

Presently, in regard to the Hamas-Israeli war, a succession of similarly incremental changes could open a path to the constructive transformation of the war. One possible change is being negotiated right now: a ceasefire that includes the exchange of Hamas-held hostages for Israeli-held Palestinian prisoners.  Another imaginable change is a restructuring of the Palestinian Authority to play a major role in the governance of Gaza and the West bank, aided by the United Nations and a few Arab nations. A third possible change is a new Israeli government recognizing the security and other benefits of a Palestinian state.  Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and a few other Arab states might then openly proclaim their readiness to work with Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to govern and rebuild Gaza. Finally, the political wing of Hamas might become dominant, recognize Israel, and foreswear violent attacks against it.

Any one of these changes would be more likely if it were understood to be met by the adversary’s move toward a constructive transformation. Many different non-governmental organizations, engaged citizens, government officials, and political leaders can act to make this change happen.

Not possible, you say? The same was said of the Israeli-Egyptian détente, until it happened. Each of the possible changes in the current conflict in Gaza looks improbable, until steps are taken to make it happen.

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Israel’s political and military leaders have produced so many outright lies regarding Gaza and Hamas that it might seem there is no point in wasting one’s breath on them. Consider the following statements and the contrary evidence for those not yet convinced:

• The IDF does not deliberately target civilians, journalists, medical facilities and staff, or restricts aid. In fact, the IDF has deliberately targeted civilians (as widely reported), journalists (as Human Rights Watch has detailed), and medical personnel (according to Amnesty International). It has also put various restrictions on aid.
• The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is harboring among its employees Hamas militants who took part in the October 7 massacres. Yet, Israel has not shared any information or evidence to back up its assertions while UNRWA has screened its 13,000 staff in Gaza on a biannual basis.
• Israel’s declared war on Gaza and the ongoing, undeclared war against Palestinians in the West Bank are “against Hamas” and “terrorists.” In fact, multiple Israeli governments, including the current one, have committed to appropriating all Palestinian territory and committing genocide against the Palestinians currently living there.
• Iran is the main financier and supporter of Hamas. In fact, other entities like Qatar have been the main supporters of Hamas, and Israel too was instrumental in creating Hamas to divide Palestinian sympathies.

Other statements, however, made by Israeli and other world leaders, that may appear to be true, and that continue to be taken at face value, are in reality dangerously deceptive. Their aim is to justify Israeli politics regarding violence towards Palestinians, actions in support of the current war, or inaction in stopping it. Careful examination of a few of these will expose the ways in which such statements operate.

Dictionary of Deception

Probably the most repeated statement proffered by Israeli politicians and their supporters is that Hamas and Palestinians in general deny the Israeli state’s “right to exist.” This statement entirely ignores—and diverts attention away from—the unquestionable reality that Israel has existed as a state since 1948 and continues to exist, whether or not Hamas or anyone else objects to it.

At the same time, the Israeli complaint occludes the reality that it is Palestine whose right to exist as a state has long been denied. Although the majority of world governments have recognized Palestinian statehood, the State of Palestine has only an observer status in the UN. This is so because Israel and the United States, Canada, Australia, and an absolute majority of  European states have refused to recognize Palestinian statehood (though this might change in future). Israel’s current government has explicitly and loudly proclaimed that it has no plan to recognize a Palestinian state. It is, thus, Israel that denies any Palestinian state’s right to exist.

Instead, Israel is expanding the occupation of Palestinian territory, and when faced with resistance, it asserts its own “right to self-defense.” However, in 1983, the UN General Assembly explicitly affirmed Palestinians’ right to self-defense “by all available means, including armed struggle,” a right they share with all nations under “colonial domination, apartheid and foreign occupation,” as asserted in the Geneva Conventions. This right does not include violence against Israeli civilians, which Hamas militants have perpetrated. Such violence may qualify as war crimes. Nevertheless, the Geneva Conventions make clear that the “right to self-defense” belongs to the occupied, not the occupier. Any military or police action taken by an occupier against the occupied—even when the occupied uses violence against occupation—is violence, not self-defense.

The Hill Video: “SUSPENDED: Israeli SPOX Caught in LIE About Gaza Food Aid”

Another instance of Israeli deception can be seen in Israeli politicians’ regular insistence that Palestinian schools teach their children to hate Jews. UNRWA—the main sponsor of education in the West Bank and Gaza—was accused of spreading incitement of violence and hatred of Jews in their textbooks. However, the European Union review of Palestinian schoolbooks has concluded that they include “a strong focus on human rights…express a narrative of resistance within the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and…display an antagonism towards Israel.” None of this equates to hatred of Jews. The accusation of Palestinian schoolbooks spreading hatred is also debunked by The European Middle East Project.

The EU report further notes that textbooks produced by Israeli authorities removed “entire chapters on regional and Palestinian history”, which “fundamentally changes the [Palestinian] national narrative.” Israeli state school books often simply ignore the Palestinian presence, and perpetually depict Israel and Jews as victims of Palestinian and Arab enemy.

No wonder, then, that Israeli girls sing about the annihilation of Gaza on an online Israeli TV program, and Israeli soldiers in Gaza make videos broadcasting their mocking, humiliation, and killing of Palestinian civilians as well as their destruction or looting of Palestinian property. These soldiers are not necessarily right-wing Zionists like some of the Jewish citizens blocking aid to Gaza or trying to build houses within Gaza’s borders. Nor are they necessarily the Jewish settlers from the West Bank. Many of them are just ordinary citizens. But in their ordinariness, they provide a frightening and accurate picture of Israeli society’s general views of Palestinians. This is why a majority of Israeli citizens support the genocide in Gaza even if they do not support Israel’s prime minister and his government.

Finally, contrary to their lament of “grave concern” for “suffering in Gaza,” and their often self-serving statements, politicians outside Israel are far from powerless to stop the bloodshed in Gaza. Even within the classical diplomatic arsenal, individual states can expel Israel’s ambassadors and recall their own. They can impose sanctions or boycott Israeli businesses, politicians, cultural and sports representatives (as they have done, with vigor, with regard to Russia and Russians). They can stop their arms exports to Israel, sever economic relations, and multiply their financial support for humanitarian organizations operating in Gaza (rather than cutting that support). Only a handful of states have actually recalled their ambassadors from Israel. No Western state is among them, and except Bahrain, no other rich Arab state.

How can it be that the people who have demonstrated endlessly in support of Palestinians—and have identified and urged many of these measures—know more than powerful heads of state about strategies to stop the genocide?

The answer, of course, is that governments do know. And that reality brings us to some hard truths.

Hard Truths

Palestinians have no friends among Western governments. They have known this hard truth for a long time, and their knowledge has been confirmed in a most dreadful way. Even though a few European countries (like Spain and Ireland) have used very sharp language against Israel, they have taken no steps that would protect the lives of Palestinians in Gaza and in the West Bank. The United States and a few Western governments have bragged that they have imposed (travel and banking) sanctions on a few Jewish settlers and settlements. But this is a ludicrous substitute for effective action. Some Western leaders and governments now face court cases, brought by pro-Palestinian human rights organizations and lawyers, charging that they have violated both domestic and international laws by supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza (by supplying of ammunition to Israel), or by their failures to stop it. But, thus far, judicial interventions have not brought effective protections to the victims of genocide.

Palestinians also do not have friends among Arab governments, nor should they expect any. Their “Arab brothers” have expressed “deep concerns” about the Palestinian plight, but they have other, more important concerns, such as importing Israeli surveillance technology to keep checks on political opponents. Saudi Arabia, who long held to a policy of linking normalization with Israel to Israel’s recognition of the Palestinian state, now speaks only about a “path to Palestinian statehood.”

This means that Palestinians need their own new political force to achieve both formal recognition of statehood and peace with Israel. Are either of these two goals feasible? For now, there is no sign that various Palestinian factions will achieve unity, which is an absolutely necessary precondition to any long-term, sustainable Palestinian state. Hamas and Fatah have held numerous talks to no avail. Clearly, it is not easy to reconcile secular and Islamist worldviews, ideas of governance and ideals of societal relations. Even various Islamist factions do not see eye to eye. But without such unity, prior to the end of genocide and occupation, post-genocide and post-occupation Palestine will descend into internal violence and struggle for power. As for peace with Israel, the state of affairs in twentieth-century post-genocide societies does not offer grounds for much optimism. Genocides do not destroy only people, their cultures, and their histories. They destroy hope and imagination, too, which are necessities for building peace.

Israel, too, needs a new political force to build a totally new national narrative based on language from a dictionary very different from the dictionary of deception. The Israeli public’s overwhelming support of the destruction of Gaza, occupation of the West Bank, and expansion of settlements means that creating such a new political force and language could take generations, if ever. Still, it is possible to imagine that one day an Israeli public that is currently supporting the annihilation of Gaza may begin asking itself: “How has a state created to give hope to survivors of genocide turned into a perpetrator of genocide? What have I given my voice to and what have I been silent about?”

Unless and until this happens, there is no hope for either Israel or Palestine. Nor for the world within which all of us exist.

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – The three major wars or conflicts that are ongoing today demonstrate the volatility of the intersection between the local and the global.

In the Hamas-Israeli conflict, we see how the maintenance of the Israeli settler-colonial state is intertwined with the preservation of the global hegemony of the United States.

In the war in Ukraine, a bloody war of attrition between two countries was provoked by Washington’s push to expand NATO to a country of the former Soviet Union.

In the South China Sea, we are witnessing how disputes over territory and natural resources have been elevated to a global conflict by the U.S. effort to maintain its global hegemony against China, to which it is losing the geoeconomic competition but over which it continues to enjoy absolute military superiority.

In short, the main cause of global instability today lies in the fusion of the local and the global, geopolitics and geoeconomics, empire and capitalism.

Balance of Power, Balance of Terror

What makes current conflicts especially volatile is that they are occurring amidst the absence of any effective multilateral coercive authority to impose a peaceful settlement. In Ukraine, it is the balance of military might that will determine the outcome of the war, and here Russia seems to be prevailing over the Ukraine-NATO-U.S. axis.

In the Middle East, there is no effective coercive power to oppose the Israeli-U.S. military behemoth—which makes it all the more remarkable that despite a genocidal campaign that has been going on for nearly four months now, Israel has not achieved its principal war aim of destroying Hamas.

In the South China Sea, what determines the course of events is the balance of power between China and the United States. There are no “rules of the game,” so that there is always a possibility  that American and Chinese ships playing “chicken”–or heading for each other, then swerving at the last minute–can accidentally collide, and this collision can escalate to a higher form of conflict such as a conventional war.

Without effective coercive constraints imposed by a multilateral organization on the hegemon and its allies, the latter can easily descend into genocide and mass murder. Whether in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, or Gaza, the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Genocide, have been shown to be mere pieces of paper.

The Right of Self Defense

Given the absence of a multilateral referee that can impose its will, it is only the development of political, diplomatic, and military counterpower that can restrain the hegemon. This is the lesson that national liberation wars in Algeria and Vietnam taught the world. This is the lesson that the Palestinian resistance today teaches us.

This is why even as we condemn wars of empire waged by the hegemon, we must defend the right of people to resort to armed self-defense.

Al Jazeera English Video: “Overnight attacks hit central Gaza”

This does not mean that efforts at peacemaking by global civil society have no role to play. They do. I still remember how shortly before the invasion of Iraq, The New York Times came out with an article on February 17, 2003, in response to massive mobilizations against the planned invasion of Iraq, that said that there were only two superpowers left in the world, and they were the United States and global public opinion, and that then President George W. Bush ignored this outpouring of global resistance at his peril.

Global civil society did contribute to the ending of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by eroding the legitimacy of those wars among the U.S. public, making them so unpopular that even Donald Trump denounced them–in retrospect that is–as did many personalities that had voted for war in the U.S. Congress.

The recent decision of the International Court of Justice that has ordered Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza is likely to have a similar impact as global civil society’s resistance to Bush, Jr’s, invasion of Iraq. The ICJ decision may not have an immediate impact on the ongoing war, but it will erode the legitimacy of the project of settler colonialism and apartheid in the long run, deepening the isolation of Israel in the long run.

A Just Peace

We often see peace as an ideal state. But the peace of the graveyard is not peace. A peace bought at the price of fascist repression not only is not desirable but it will not last.

Oppressed peoples like the Palestinians will refuse peace at any price, peace that is obtained at the price of humiliation. As they have shown in the 76 years since the Nakba, their massive expulsion from their lands and homes, the Palestinians will not settle for anything less than peace with justice, one that enables them to recover their lands seized by Israelis, establish a sovereign state “from the river to the sea,” and allow them to hold their heads up in pride.

The rest of the world owes them its wholehearted support to realize such a just peace through all possible means, even as we work to oppose wars of empire waged by hegemons in other parts of the world.

Via Foreign Policy in Focus

The war is terrible, but there are also signs of a new social order emerging.

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) The terrible war initiated in October 2023 between Israel and Hamas was the result of the failure of leaders in both camps to construct a mutually acceptable peace. Yet, the horrors of this war can be an impetus to put an end to such violence. People from both sides must take shåared actions to fashion a mutual peace and thus experience shared security.

Fortunately, such efforts are growing. They include the work of organizations and institutions throughout Israel/Palestine.

Founded in 1970, Oasis for Peace/Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam has grown from a few tents into a bilingual village of more than 70 families, half-Jewish and half-Palestinian. Villagers govern together, attend school together, work together, and play together. It operates a School of Peace, which provides peace-building courses to hundreds of professionals in many fields.

The Parents Circle-Families Forum, also known as Bereaved Families Supporting Peace, Reconciliation, and Tolerance, was founded in 1995. Presently, it has Jewish Israelis and Palestinian members with relatives who were killed by persons of the other ethnicity. They engage in dialogue sessions and presentations to diverse groups “to prevent further bereavement, to create dialogue, reconciliation and peace.”

Starting with only 50 children in 1998, Hand in Hand now has six school campuses across Israel and over 2,000 students. Their mission is to “build a Hand in Hand school in every mixed Jewish-Arab city throughout the country, leveraging a shift from conflict to cooperation for all of Israeli society.”

Digital, Dream, Illustrated v. 3

The Palestine-Israel Journal of Politics, Economics, and Culture, now in its twenty-ninth year, demonstrates that it is possible to work together with mutual respect and cooperation to conduct dialogue even on conflicting and sensitive matters.

Other organizations focus on mobilizing citizens from both communities. Combatants for Peace, founded in 2006, is an Israeli-Palestinian NGO committed to non-violent action against the Israeli occupation and all forms of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories. It is “the only movement worldwide that was founded by former fighters on both sides of an active conflict.” Standing Together—founded in 2015 and with about 5,000 members—is a progressive grassroots movement mobilizing Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel against the occupation and for peace, equality, and social justice.

Then there are organizations that strengthen links between progressives in the United States and in Israel, like Partners for Progressive Israel, which has worked since the early 1990s to strengthen human/civil rights in Israel and achieve a just peace with Israel’s Palestinian neighbors. The New Israel Fund, a U.S.-based non-profit NGO established in 1979, raises funds to support organizations in Israel to advance social justice and equality for all Israelis. Alliance for Peace in the Middle East, headquartered in Washington, DC, gathers funding to expand trust-building interactions between Israelis and Palestinians. It enhances the impact of its 160 member organizations and connects individuals and groups to create a critical mass that supports peace.

The events of Oct 7, 2023, and the ensuing war have not destroyed these organizations. Indeed, it has energized many of them.

The New Israel Fund, for example, supported its action arm, Shatil, which aids the Bedouins who also suffered from the Hamas attacks on October 7, some of whom aided the Jews who had been attacked. Furthermore, many organizations have raised more funds, helped by sympathetic individuals and non-governmental organizations in other countries.

Such organizations and institutions can help form a broad social movement that leads to a new social order that produces two independent states, Israel and Palestine. As shared understandings grow, other states and international institutions can assist establishing new policies. Shared actions can produce greater hope that a shared peace is possible.

Although some officials focus on Israel’s intent, others consider the consequences of Israel’s actions for the people of Gaza.