Brazen Hamas Billboard Links Hamas to Turkey, Qatar.

Hamas’s publicity billboard that reads, ‘Jerusalem is Waiting for Men.’ Photo: Screenshot.

In a rather conspicuous propaganda stunt, Hamas, the terror group ruling Gaza, foisted a new billboard showing the heads of its Islamist leadership, along with the leaders of Turkey and Qatar, with a caption that implies their help has been recruited to wrest Jerusalem from Israeli control.

The billboard shows Hamas political chief  Khaled Meshal and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, alongside previous and current Qatari leaders Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The billboard reads ”Jerusalem is Waiting for Men,” along with a photo of the Dome of the Rock.

The massive banner was photographed in Gaza by the Palestinian News Agency, and flagged on Thursday by blogger Elder of Ziyon.

The blogger wrote that the sign also implies two other messages.

First, the belittling of leaders of other Arab countries, especially Egypt, where Hamas gained under the Muslim Brotherhood leadership, and is now being shunned after that group, its political “big brother,” was expelled last year.

And, second, that Hamas, which played second fiddle to Islamic Jihad in last month’s shelling of Israel, is the stronger of the two groups and will be on the winning team to, one day, take Jerusalem.

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Egyptian Entrepreneur Laments Lack of Open Business With Israel.

Cairo International Airport, where sources spied Israeli and Egyptian security officials meeting to discuss cooperation to fight terrorists in the Sinai. Photo: Cairo International Airport.

An Egyptian entrepreneur said he resents his country’s hostility to Israel which prevents him from openly conducting any business with the Jewish state, Egyptian daily Al-Ahram reported late last week.

“It is very unfortunate that we cannot be pragmatic and say this particular country has good quality and inexpensive commodities and we are going to import from it because it is in our interest,” said the unnamed Egyptian, who still does business with Israel on the down low. “After all these years an Israeli commodity on, say, the shelf of a supermarket would not be picked up except by a few people — if we assume that any supermarket would at all dare to carry, say, Israeli fruit juice.”

Like most Egyptian businessmen who work with Israelis, he insisted on remaining anonymous for fear of being “stigmatized as dealing with the enemy,” he told Al-Ahram.

“I really don’t understand; we have a peace deal and we cannot do business, it has been 35 years since this peace treaty was signed and still it is a big issue if someone said let us do business with Israel or let us benefit of their agricultural expertise,” he said.

Trade between Israel and Egypt dropped after President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in 2011, but government officials in Cairo say the fall was possibly a result of the subsequent political turmoil, according to the report.

Despite any current animosity Egypt may harbor toward Israel, an independent economic source told Al-Ahram that Egyptian authorities are considering all options in dealing with the country’s current severe energy shortages, not excluding the import of natural gas from Israel.

“Cooperation in natural gas has been very stable for many years despite the suspension and trade dispute that occurred after the 25 January Revolution removed Mubarak — but this is the case with trade cooperation in general, limited and stable,” said a government official.

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US Congress has things to tell the Palestinians and Iran with acceptable diplomacy in mind. House warns Palestinian aid may be cut. US lawmakers are threatening to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in US aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) if President Mahmoud Abbas goes through with his stated intention to sign on to 15 UN treaties. Summary? Print US lawmakers are signaling that the United States could withhold hundreds of millions of dollars from the Palestinian Authority over PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ gambit with the United Nations. Author Julian Pecquet Posted April 2, 2014 Congress sought to tie funding for the PA to preservation of the status quo at the UN in this year’s omnibus spending bill. While it’s not clear Abbas’ decision violates the letter of the law, appropriators have made it clear they think its spirit has been trampled on. Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, the chairwoman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations & Related Programs, told Al-Monitor that aid should be revisited. She said the goal of US assistance since the 1990s has been to help strike a peace deal, and that the UN move appears antithetical to that. “What a lot of it was, we’re going to try to help as you try to negotiate at the peace table in good faith,” Granger said Wednesday after a hearing where she pressed President Obama’s UN envoy, Samantha Power, on the issue. “Well, I can’t see that that was good faith.” Granger’s Democratic counterpart, Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., said she was “extremely disappointed” with Abbas’ decision. “There was a decision made last year that investing in the PA and economic development would be the most productive step we could take to encourage peace,” Lowey told Al-Monitor. She said it’s not clear whether that’s still the case. Current law contains several restrictions on the aid, including requirements that the PA battle anti-Israeli “incitement” and refrain from dragging Israel before the International Criminal Court or joining more UN agencies. The Obama administration has requested $440 million in aid, but the spending bill doesn’t set a figure. “Congress is silent on the funding levels for the PA,” a House aide explained. “We require a spend plan for how the administration wants to direct assistance to the PA with the requirement that they have to provide Congressional notifications to the committees of jurisdiction. Once Congress is notified we have the ability to hold funds. We also have updated and strengthened the conditions on our assistance to the PA in the FY14 bill.” Aid would be cut if “the Palestinians obtain the same standing as member states or full membership as a state in the United Nations or any specialized agency thereof outside an agreement negotiated between Israel and the Palestinians,” the omnibus spending bill states. Secretary of State John Kerry can waive the restrictions if he “certifies to the Committees on Appropriations that to do so is in the national security interest of the United States, and submits a report to such Committees detailing how the waiver and the continuation of assistance would assist in furthering Middle East peace.” Power had harsh words for the PA at Wednesday’s hearing — but stopped short of announcing an aid freeze. “The United States will stand with Israel, we will defend it, and we will challenge every instance of unfair treatment throughout the UN system,” Power said. “This solemn commitment also extends to a firm opposition to any and all unilateral actions in the international arena, including on Palestinian statehood, that circumvent or prejudge the outcome that can only come about through a negotiated settlement.” The president’s fiscal year 2015 budget request includes $370 million in Economic Support Funds that the State Department says “creates an atmosphere that supports negotiations, encourages broad-based economic growth, promotes democratic governance, and improves the everyday lives of Palestinians, thereby creating an environment supportive of a peace agreement and contributing to the overall stability and security of the region.” It also sets aside $70 million in International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement funding aimed at “reforming the Palestinian Authority (PA) security sector, and sustaining and maintaining the capabilities that the security forces have developed.” Some outside observers believe Abbas was careful not to run afoul of the spending legislation when he announced his decision. While he is expected to sign on to the treaties when he appears before the UN General Assembly Friday, he will not be joining any agencies. “Technically they’re not in violation” of the appropriations law, said Lara Friedman, the director of Policy and Government Relations at Americans for Peace Now. “That technicality may be irrelevant, because we have a new … bill coming up, and odds are Congress will just change that language.” Cole Bockenfeld, the advocacy director at the Project on Middle East Democracy, said Abbas probably has a good understanding of US law. “My sense is he knows it very well or US government folks would be communicating that very clearly to him,” Bockenfeld said. “Even on previous steps it seems calculated very clearly exactly how far they’re willing to go.” But Congress may react harshly after failing to stop further UN steps by the Palestinians that they see as being aimed at undermining Israel. Lawmakers — including Granger and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs panel on the Middle East — blocked aid after Palestine joined UNESCO as a member state in 2011. The Obama administration released $500 million in previously appropriated funds last year after lawmakers lifted their objections. “The language that they inserted [in the spending bill] was sort of to draw a line in the sand about not going any further in the UN after what happened in UNESCO,” Bockenfeld said. “It’s designed to stop any further moves, so now that [Abbas] is making further moves, whether it crosses that line or not — how the Congress will interpret that, how the administration will interpret that, there’s a good chance those two will be different interpretations altogether.” The Palestinians argue that their UN application has nothing to do with the peace process — or with Congress. Maen Areikat, their ambassador to Washington, said the PA agreed to put its UN applications on hold in exchange for Israel releasing 104 Palestinian prisoners, some of them accused of deadly attacks against Israelis, as called for under Kerry’s peace talks framework. When Israel reneged on releasing the last batch of 26 prisoners over the weekend, he said, the PA was relieved of its obligation — even as it continues to participate in the peace talks. “It was a natural reaction for us when the Israelis did not honor their commitment,” Areikat told Al-Monitor. “I don’t understand why the United States — and the US Congress — would interpret that as a step by the Palestinians to undercut or undermine US efforts. From the beginning we’ve said that we are not seeking any confrontation with the United States, nor with the Congress.” Areikat went on to say that cutting aid would only hurt common Palestinians. “We very much appreciate the support that the United States is providing toward the Palestinian people,” he said. “But Congress cannot expect us to keep our part of the deal when the Israelis are reneging on their part.” His office is circulating a Q&A from Palestine Liberation Organization’s Negotiations Affairs Department on Capitol Hill that spells out which treaties Abbas plans to sign and makes the case that the peace talks aren’t undermined by the move. “What they need to do is understand exactly the nature of this Palestinian step and not try to overreact and take it to a different level that would, in the end, undermine US interests,” Areikat said. “To go back punishing the Palestinians, I don’t think will be productive and I hope it does not happen.” Read more: www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/04/palestine-un-aid-cuts-peace-talks-abbas.html?utm_source=Al-Monitor+Newsletter+%5BEnglish%5D&utm_campaign=7e52647dcb-January_9_20141_8_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_28264b27a0-7e52647dcb-93102841#ixzz2xqwYv8yj ============================ U.S. would find Iran UN candidate ‘extremely troubling’ Posted on April 2, 2014 by Laura Rozen Read more: backchannel.al-monitor.com/index.php/2014/04/8056/us-would-find-rumored-un-envoy-pick-extremely-troubling/#ixzz2xqx4seiEThe State Department said Wednesday that it has notified Iran that it would have “serious concerns” about the choice of Hamid Aboutalebi to be Iran’s next UN envoy. “We think this nomination would be extremely troubling,” State Department deputy spokesperson Marie Harf told journalists at the State Department press briefing Wednesday, Reuters reported.“We are taking a close look at the case now and we have raised our serious concerns about this possible nomination with the government of Iran,” Harf said.Aboutalebi, a career Iranian diplomat close to Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, told Iranian media in interviews last month that he had been summoned on occasion to serve as a translator during the 1979 US Iran hostage crisis, but had otherwise not been involved.But Aboutalebi’s even remote, alleged association with the embassy seizure and hostage crisis that traumatized Americans and ruptured US Iranian diplomatic ties over three decades ago has set off a flurry of denunciations from some former US hostages and members of Congress, and some US Iran watchers say Iran should pick someone else for the important, New York-based ambassadorial post.Iranian officials suggested this week that the nomination of Aboutalebi for the UN post was not yet official, and that it would only formally nominate someone for diplomatic posts who could receive the necessary approval from the hosting government. “Iran’s policy is to formally appoint ambassadors – to all posts – once all the formalities are completed,” an Iranian official, speaking not for attribution, told Al-Monitor Tuesday, in response to a query on Aboutalebi’s status. Mr. Hamid Babaei, Iran’s spokesman at the UN mission in New York, repeated a variation of that line when contacted by Al-Monitor Wednesday to ask about the State Department’s comments on Aboutalebi. He said it was up to one’s own interpretation if that means Iran will nominate someone else if US approval is not forthcoming for Dr. Aboutalebi. Aboutalebi visited the United States as a member of Iran’s delegation to the United Nations General Assembly in the mid-1990s, but was never previously full-time posted to the US, the Iranian official said. His alleged, peripheral connection to the 1979 crisis apparently did not come up when vetted for a visa for the short visit back then, former US officials surmised. Aboutalebi, a former Iranian envoy to Italy, Belgium and Australia who currently works as an advisor in Rouhani’s presidential office, “is more reformist and more skeptical and critical of the [Iranian] system than” many others, one Iranian analyst, speaking not for attribution, told Al-Monitor Tuesday. “But to be frank, it doesn’t matter,” the Iranian analyst added. “Once [the controversy] hit the media, I think the Iranians should have withdrawn him much earlier.” The State Department comments Wednesday “and the movements in the [Congress] yesterday seemed to finally press Iranians to leak that he was not officially nominated and hopefully end the whole saga,” an Iranian scholar told Al-Monitor Wednesday. Read more: backchannel.al-monitor.com/index.php/2014/04/8056/us-would-find-rumored-un-envoy-pick-extremely-troubling/#ixzz2xqxI9TZC

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday sharpened the Obama administration’s mounting criticism of Russia’s role in the escalating violence in Syria, asserting that the Kremlin was undermining the prospects of a negotiated solution by “contributing so many more weapons” and political support to President Bashar al-Assad.

“They’re, in fact, enabling Assad to double down, which is creating an enormous problem,” Mr. Kerry said in Jakarta, Indonesia, before he flew here to confer with top officials of the United Arab Emirates, a gulf state that has been a strong supporter of the Syrian opposition.

Mr. Kerry’s tough criticism underscored the erosion of the Russian-American partnership in Syria, and raised questions about the viability of the United States’ diplomatic strategy to help resolve the escalating crisis.

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President Obama has been deeply reluctant for nearly three years to get the United States directly involved in Syria’s civil war, and pulled back the threat of cruise missile strikes in September after Mr. Assad’s agreement to eliminate his chemical arsenal. While chemicals for making poison gas are leaving the country, behind schedule, Mr. Assad’s conventional attacks on civilians have escalated significantly, and now Mr. Obama is calling for a review of what one senior official called “both old and new options” to bolster opposition forces and ease a desperate humanitarian crisis.

Administration officials, however, insist that those options do not include directly supplying more sophisticated, heavier armaments to the rebels, who are already receiving some weapons and training under a limited C.I.A. program, or carrying out airstrikes in a civil war that Mr. Obama fears could turn into a prolonged conflict. Instead, the United States is considering paying salaries to some of the rebel forces and providing more transportation and intelligence, American and European officials said.

Mr. Assad’s hold on power has grown over the past year, according to the head of American intelligence. Recognizing that a political settlement is unlikely if he keeps the advantage, administration officials said that Mr. Obama and other Western leaders had dropped their objections to proposals by Saudi Arabia and other countries to funnel more advanced weapons to vetted rebel groups, including portable antiaircraft weapons, often called manpads.

A secret meeting in Washington last week among the intelligence chiefs from almost all of the countries attempting to oust the Assad government included extensive discussion about how to best provide that new lethal aid to rebel groups, the officials said. The gathering of the top intelligence officials from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Britain, France and the United Arab Emirates, and several others from the 11-nation group known as the Friends of Syria, reflected a belief that the diplomatic track has been exhausted unless Mr. Assad sustains significant military setbacks.

Mr. Kerry’s pointed remarks on Russia’s role were striking since it was Mr. Kerry who flew to Moscow in May, and the administration hoped that Russia would encourage the Syrian government to move toward a political settlement without Mr. Assad. After meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin, Mr. Kerry announced that the United States and Russia would co-sponsor renewed peace talks in Geneva.

Those talks have now stalled. In August and September, the United States fleshed out and strengthened a Russian proposal that Syria’s chemical arsenal be dismantled — a process now underway, but behind schedule — suggesting the countries could work together even while backing different sides in the war.

That comity, or at least a temporary alignment of interests, has now been set back. Mr. Obama was sharply critical of Russia in public statements over the past week, first at a news conference with President François Hollande of France and then at a meeting in California with King Abdullah II of Jordan. One senior Western official who discussed the issue with Mr. Obama last week said, “I’ve never seen him more frustrated — not only with the Russians, but with the failure of anything his own administration has tried so far.”

“The Russian view is that their guy is winning,” said the official, who has been involved in the talks in Washington, “and they may be right. So we’re back to the question we faced a year ago: How do you change the balance and force the Syrians to negotiate?”

Mr. Kerry said on Monday that the United States and its allies were approaching a series of critical decisions on how to respond to the crisis. But even as he insisted that the administration remained committed to peacefully resolving a civil war that has claimed about 140,000 Syrian lives and displaced hundreds of thousands, it is no longer clear if the United States has the influence to broker a settlement or whether the limited steps the White House is now willing to consider would be sufficient to help it regain its lost leverage.

Debate has raged since the start of the civil war over whether Western and Arab nations should provide Syria’s rebels with manpads. Administration officials have in the past sought to limit the flow of the weapons into the Syria conflict, fearing they could be smuggled away and later used by terrorists against civilian airliners. However, providing selected rebel fighters with surface-to-air missiles is a logical response to the persistent barrel-bomb attacks of Syrian cities like Aleppo and Homs.

Jeffrey White, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former senior American intelligence official, said the Assad government was using Russian-supplied Mi-8 and Mi-17 helicopters to carry out the barrel-bomb attack in Homs. Russia, he said, is most likely providing spare parts such as engines, transmissions and rotors, which may explain Mr. Kerry’s specific reference to how Russian weapons are fueling the war.

A fighter from the Damascus suburbs who fled to Beirut, Lebanon, said one of the reasons he left was that the Army of Islam, the rebel group led by Zahran Alloush, had surface-to-air missiles, which he said were a Syrian Army model taken from antiaircraft bases a year ago. But the Army of Islam, which is supported by Saudi private donors, has declined to share its plentiful arms and its cash with other rebel groups, particularly non-Islamist ones. That has complicated efforts to counter Mr. Assad’s forces around Damascus.

Mr. Obama’s apparent willingness to drop objections to supplying the rebel groups with heavier weapons may simply be an acknowledgment that Saudi Arabia and gulf states that are frustrated with American policy are now prepared to do so anyway, without Washington’s blessing. American officials say they also now have a better sense than they did last year about which groups they can trust to use and secure the weapons.

Mr. Obama has also been influenced by growing fears that Syria is becoming a training ground for a new generation of terrorists and may become even more of a haven until a political settlement is reached. “That’s one big change from a year ago,” a senior American diplomat said. “And it’s beginning to haunt everyone with memories of Afghanistan.”

The Wall Street Journal first reported the likely increase in manpad shipments and rebel salaries on its website Friday night.

Mr. Kerry alluded on Monday to the internal administration deliberations about what to do next on Syria on Monday before he conferred here with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed and Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates.

“It is important for the world to consider in these next days exactly what steps can now be taken in the face of this intransigence that is creating an even greater human catastrophe by the moment,” Mr. Kerry said at his news conference in Jakarta.

In an administration that has been deeply divided on Syria strategy — the first hints of antigovernment protest erupted in the Damascus markets exactly three years ago Monday — Mr. Kerry has been among those arguing for more overt and covert pressure on Mr. Assad, according to administration officials.

But Mr. Obama has been wary of deep involvement and is adamant that no American forces can be put at risk — a reflection, aides say, of his belief that even if Mr. Assad is overthrown, the country could enter into a civil war from which there is no exit for years.

Mr. Kerry’s remarks on Monday reflected the blunt assessment that Mr. Assad is filibustering in Geneva while seeking a battlefield victory. “The regime stonewalled; they did nothing, except continue to drop barrel bombs on their own people and continue to destroy their own country,” he said. “And I regret to say they are doing so with increased support from Iran, from Hezbollah and from Russia.”

Do ‘Syria,’ ‘Iraq’ and ‘Lebanon’ Still Exist?

based on the  original article by Jonathan Spyer that was posted by the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum and that we re-post with a series of changes that are mainly of editorial nature.
The Tower
February 2014

www.meforum.org/3751/syria-iraq-lebanon-nation-states

For almost a century, the Middle East has been defined by the nation-states that emerged following the Allied Europeans – British and French – victory in World War I which was the end of the Ottoman Empire, and followed later by the unraveling of the resulting colonial era. Since then, strategic analyses of the region have concentrated on the relations between these states, created by bureaucratic lines drawn by the interim colonial powers, and diplomatic efforts have generally attempted to maintain their stability and the integrity of these borders. As a result, the current map of the Middle East has remained largely unchanged over more than nine decades.

But these actually never made sense and do so much less now.  The old maps do not reflect the reality on the ground, and the region is now defined not by rivalry between nation-states, but by sectarian divisions that are spilling across the old borders and rendering them irrelevant. Today, there is a single sectarian war underway across the Middle East, one that threatens to engulf the entire region.

This war has a number of fronts, some more intense and active than others, but it is everywhere defined by sectarian conflict – especially the divide between Sunni and Shia Muslims. It is most intense in the area encompassing the current states of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon; but has also spread further afield—to Bahrain, northern Yemen, and to some degree Kuwait and eastern Saudi Arabia.

The core power on the Shia side is the Islamic Republic of Iran, the world’s leading state that accepts terror as a means to implement its plans.  Iran was the founding patron of Hezbollah, which even before 9/11  had killed more Americans than any terror group in the world. The Assad regime in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Maliki government and assorted Shia militias in Iraq, the Houthi rebels in northern Yemen, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, are all allies or proxies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is capable of rendering substantial assistance to its friends through the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) – a powerful military and economic force that possesses substantial expertise and experience in building proxy organizations and engaging in political and paramilitary warfare.

On the Sunni side, the dominant power is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which has been wary of Tehran, but also has struggled since 9/11 – on and off -  against the Islamists of Al Qaeda. Its allies include various groups among the Syrian rebels, the March 14 movement in Lebanon, the military regime in Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, and sometimes Turkey. The Saudis, however, are at something of a disadvantage. They possess no parallel to the IRGC, and have problematic relations with the extreme Sunni jihadists of al-Qaeda, who have played a prominent role in the fighting on all three major fronts and who are an outgrowth of the Saudi Wahabbi movement – the kind of Islam on which the Saudi throne is based. (Here we have a clear different approach to the issue then we found in the original article – that seemed to be over friendly to the Saudis – possibly because of the way Washington is siding with the Saudis.)

How did this situation come about? Is there evidence of a clear linkage between the various forces on the respective sides? Why is this conflict so extreme in certain countries—like Syria and Iraq—where it appears to be leading to the breakup of these states? How dangerous are these changes for the West?

Focusing on the areas of most intense conflict—Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon—can help us answer these questions.

This war is a result of the confluence of a number of circumstances. First, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon are all home to a host of different sectarian and ethnic communities. The stark divisions that exist in these societies have never been resolved. In Syria and Iraq, they were suppressed for decades by brutal dictatorial regimes. The Assad regime in Syria and Saddam Hussein’s in Iraq – were family dictatorships based on minority sectarian communities – the Alawis in Syria, and the Arab Sunnis in Iraq – while claiming to rule in the name of pan-Arab nationalism. In service of this ideology, the Syrian and Iraqi regimes ruthlessly put down ethnic and sectarian separatism in all its forms; in particular, Shia Islamism in Iraq, Sunni Islamism in Syria, and the Kurdish national movement in both countries. All were treated without mercy.

Lebanon, by contrast, is a far weaker state, which was ruled by a power-sharing arrangement between ethnic and religious groups that collapsed into civil war in 1975. The issues underlying that war were never resolved; instead, between 1990 and 2005 the Syrian army presence in Lebanon ended all discussion of basic issues of national identity. (Here we must add something the original article has completely left untackled – the fact that in Lebanon the French colonial power has sponsored a Christian – mainly Maronite – minority and allowed for its governing over the Sunni and Shia parts of the population in a  prearranged structure that fell apart with the influx of Sunni Palestinian refugees. These refugees ended up being supported by the Shia backed Hezbollah and eventually got attacked from the outside by the Israelis). Lebanon thus developed a different dynamics that is still tripartite in its Arab make up. Lebanon’s Maronite families with their French backing did not become dictators like in the cases of Iraq and Syria.

Over the last decade, the once ironclad structures of dictatorship and suppression that kept ethnic and sectarian tensions from erupting, have weakened or disappeared.

The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq destroyed the Saddam Hussein regime. A sectarian Shia government, based on the Shia Arab majority and conditionally accepted by the Kurds, took its place. In Syria, a brutal civil war has severely curtailed the power of the Assad regime, which now rules only about 40 percent of the country’s territory. The Sunni Arab majority and the Kurdish minority have carved out autonomous sectarian enclaves in the 60 percent that remains.

Western hopes that a non-sectarian identity would take hold in the areas formerly ruled by Saddam and the Assads are persistent but proven illusory. Remarks about Iraq made by then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in 2004 sum up these hopes and the tendency to self-delusion that often accompanies them. “What has been impressive to me so far,” Rice said, is that Iraqis—whether Kurds or Shia or Sunni or the many other ethnic groups in Iraq—have demonstrated that they really want to live as one in a unified Iraq…. I think particularly the Kurds have shown a propensity to want to bridge differences that were historic differences in many ways that were fueled by Saddam Hussein and his regime… What I have found interesting and I think important is the degree to which the leaders of the Shia and Kurdish and Sunni communities have continually expressed their desires to live in a unified Iraq.

This faith is expressed also by the Obama Administration, and as a result, it has continued to support the Shia-dominated government in Iraq, led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. It sees Maliki’s opposition to Sunni insurgents in western Anbar province as an elected government’s opposition to extremist rebels. This fails to take into account the sectarian nature of the Maliki government itself, and the discriminatory policies he has pursued against the Sunnis of western Iraq.

The reemergence of sectarian conflict so evident in Iraq has also emerged in Syria and is, in turn, showed up in neighboring Lebanon.

Lebanon was first drawn into the Syrian  conflict as a result of the significant and highly effective intervention in Syria in support of the Assad regime by Iran’s Lebanon-based terrorist army, Hezbollah. This quickly led to retaliation against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon by elements among Syria’s Sunni rebels. Supporters of the Sunni rebels have succeeded in attacking Hezbollah’s Dahiyeh compound in south Beirut five times. The bombing on January 2, 2014,  was carried out by a young Lebanese member of an organization called ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) named Qutaiba Muhammad al-Satem; ISIS are Islamic extremists who have been operating as a branch of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria.

A map of Syria showing zones of control by the regime and various militias. (Image Source: WikiMedia Commons)

While Hezbollah’s decision to intervene on behalf of the Assad regime in Syria and the subsequent Sunni reaction is partially the result of the divided nature of Lebanon, and Syria, and their unresolved questions of national identity, larger regional conflicts, also of a sectarian nature, are a driving force behind the violence.

Hezbollah’s participation in the Syrian civil war came not as a result of automatic sentiments of solidarity, but because Hezbollah forms part of a regional alliance headed by Iran, to which the Assad regime also belongs. When Assad found himself in trouble, Hezbollah was mobilized to assist him. On the opposing side, the Syrian rebels have benefited from the support and patronage of Iran’s rival, Saudi Arabia, and other states along the Arabian peninsula, including the United Arab Emirates.

This rivalry is long standing and not just rooted in theological differences. It is about power. Iran is controlled by a revolutionary regime whose goal is to become the hegemonic force in the Middle East. Although the Iranians certainly regard the Saudis as an enemy and as unfit custodians of Islam’s most holy sites, Tehran’s main goal is to assert control over Arabian Gulf energy supplies, replacing the U.S. as guarantor of resources upon which world is dependent. Tehran understands that the real source of power in the region is the Gulf itself, with its enormous reserves of oil and natural gas that are essential to the global economy. To achieve its goals, Iran must tempt or coerce the Gulf monarchies away from U.S. protection and toward an alliance with Tehran, and ironically, American perceived weakness in the face of Tehran’s nuclear pursuit makes that all the more possible.

Riyadh has emerged as the principle opponent to Iran’s regional ambitions, mainly because the former guarantor of the current regional order, the United States, has chosen to leave the field. Until 2011, the Middle East appeared to be locked into a kind of cold war, in which the Iranians, along with their allies and proxies, sought to overturn the U.S.-dominated regional order, which was based on U.S. alliances with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel. Events over the last five years, however, have created the impression that the U.S. no longer wishes to play this role: America failed to back its longtime Egyptian ally, Hosni Mubarak, when he faced domestic unrest in early 2011. It failed to support the rebel forces fighting the Iran-backed Assad regime. And it failed to back Bahrain against an Iran-supported uprising in the same year. Now, the U.S. appears to be seeking a general rapprochement with Iran.

As a result of all this, Saudi Arabia has begun to take a far more active role in the region. Riyadh and its Gulf allies have certainly helped to finance and stabilize Egypt after the military removed Muhammad Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government from power. It began to take a leading role in supporting the Syrian rebels. It has well-documented relations with the anti-Syrian March 14 movement in Lebanon. In December 2013, the Saudis pledged $3 billion to the official Lebanese army. They also support anti-Maliki elements in Iraq. In addition, they are seeking to create an alliance among the other Gulf states in order to oppose Iranian ambitions, with some success.

But all of the above will not work for the Saudis unless they also stretch out a friendly hand to Israel and do a “SADAT” – that is – backing the right of Israel provided it settles with the Palestinians and do this in a pro-active way by showing their readiness to bankroll a solution of the Palestinian conflict. We say this is the cheapest way for the Saudis to wrestle the region from the Iranians – but we found no such conclusion in the original article. This might be too revolutionary for the conventional mindset that believes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is just another Middle East intractable conflict like the one in the article. The trick is to see how an opportunity is created when trying to go about two seemingly intractable problems in tandem!

The original article follows instead by saying -  “increasingly violent rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, intensified by American withdrawal from the region, has helped turn a conflict that was once cold into an increasingly hot cross-border sectarian war.”

There is considerable evidence of links between Iran and Saudi Arabia, on the one hand, and their respective allies in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, on the other.

On the Iranian side, Tehran no longer makes any serious attempt to deny the enormous assistance they have given the Assad regime in Syria. Indeed, the Iranians have effectively mobilized all their available regional assets in order to preserve it. The commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ elite Qods Force, Qassem Suleimani, went to Syria himself in order to coordinate these efforts. Perhaps most notably, in mid-2012 the Iranians began training a new light infantry force for Assad. Called the National Defense Force, it was necessary because Assad was unable to use much of his own army, which consisted of Sunni conscripts whose loyalty was unreliable. Iran has even sent its own IRGC fighters to fight in Syria; a fact revealed by footage taken by an Iranian cameraman who was later killed by the rebels, the testimony of Syrian defectors, and the capture of a number of IRGC men in August 2012.

In April 2013, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was summoned to Iran and instructed to deploy his own fighters in Syria. Up to 10,000 of them are now on the ground in Syria at any given time, and they played a crucial role in retaking the strategic town of Qusayr in August 2013. Hezbollah fighters are also taking a prominent role in the battle for the Qalamun area near the Lebanese border, as well as the fighting around Damascus.

Iranian financial donations have also been vital in keeping the regime alive. In January 2013, Iran announced a “credit facility” agreement with Syria that extended a $1 billion line of credit to Assad. Later the same year, an additional credit line of $3.6 billion was announced.

Iraq has also played a vital role in supporting Assad, mainly by allowing Iran to use Iraqi territory and airspace to transfer weapons to Syrian forces. At first glance, this appears to be a strange policy. Relations between Iraq and Syria prior to the civil war were not good, with Maliki openly accusing Assad of supporting Sunni insurgents. But this has now changed. Indeed, Maliki has openly supported Assad since the beginning of the Syrian civil war. This reflects his increasing closeness to Iran, which helped ensure Maliki’s emergence as prime minister after the 2010 elections and pressured Assad to support him as well. Relations between Iraq, Iran, and Syria have only improved since.

In addition to government support, Iraqi Shia militias are now fighting in Syria on behalf of Assad. The Abu Fadl al-Abbas Brigades, Ktaeb Hezbollah, and the Ahl al-Haq group all have forces in Syria. They are playing an important role, given that one of Assad’s major weaknesses is his lack of reliably loyal soldiers. The eruption of violence in Iraq’s western Anbar province has further cemented this alliance, since the insurgency is a direct result of advances made by Sunni jihadis in Syria.

As a result of all this, the Iranian-led side of the regional conflict has emerged as a tightly organized alliance, capable of acting in a coordinated way, pooling its resources for a common goal, and fighting effectively from western Iraq all the way to the Mediterranean.

The Sunni side of the conflict is more chaotic and disjointed. Saudi Arabia is its main financier, but it lacks an equivalent to the Qods force and the IRGC, who are world leaders in subversion and irregular warfare.

Only the most extreme jihadi elements appear capable of clear coordination across borders. For example, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, as its name suggests, is active in both countries and controls a contiguous area stretching from the western Anbar province in Iraq to the eastern Raqqa province in Syria. ISIS regards itself as a franchise of al-Qaeda, although it does not take orders directly from the al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan. Another al-Qaeda group, Jabhat al-Nusra, is active in Syria. In Lebanon, a third branch of al-Qaeda, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, has played a role in the attacks on Hezbollah. In addition, both the ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra are active in Lebanon.

But there are also less extreme groups opposing the Syrian-Iranian axis. Saudi Arabia has backed the March 14 movement, which is the main Sunni opposition party in Lebanon, as well as providing financial support to the Lebanese army. In Syria, the Saudis have fostered the Islamic Front, an alliance of eight Islamist groups unconnected to al-Qaeda. It includes some of the strongest rebel brigades, such as Ahrar al-Sham, Liwa al-Islam, and Liwa al-Tawhid. It is now emerging as the key bloc among the rebels. The Saudis also dominate the Syrian opposition in exile, with Ahmed Jarba, who has close links to Riyadh, recently reelected chairman of the Syrian National Coalition.

There are no indications that the Saudis are backing Sunni insurgents in Iraq, but the larger Sunni community is certainly looking to Riyadh for help. Relations between Saudi Arabia and the current Iraqi government are very bad. The border between the two countries is closed except during the Hajj pilgrimage, there is no Saudi embassy in Baghdad, and commercial relations are kept at a minimum. Some of the Sunni tribes in western Anbar have close links to the Saudis. While they are hostile to al-Qaeda, they are also opposed to the Maliki government, which they regard as a sectarian Shia regime.

There is a third element to this regional conflict that is something of a wild card: The Kurds. A non-Arab people who have long sought an independent state, the Kurds have succeeded in creating a flourishing autonomous zone in northern Iraq that enjoys most of the elements of de facto sovereignty. Since July 2012, another Kurdish autonomous zone has been established in northeast Syria. These two areas occupy a contiguous land mass, but are not politically united. The Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq is controlled by the Kurdish Democratic Party, led by Massoud Barzani, while the autonomous zone in northeast Syria is controlled by the PYD (Democratic Union Party), which is the Syrian branch of the Turkish-based leftist PKK movement.

These movements are rivals, and each sees itself as the appropriate leader of the Kurds. But while there is tension between them, each appears to be securely in control of its respective areas. The Kurds do not enjoy the support of any state in the region, and both the Iranians and the Saudis regard Kurdish national aspirations with suspicion. Nonetheless, the Kurds have managed to accumulate sufficient organizational and military strength to ensure the survival of their self-governing enclaves.

All these factors indicate that two rival alliances are clashing for hegemony over the region. There are myriad practical links between the various combatants, and their activities have long since spilled across the borders of the various states involved in the fighting; as indicated by the presence of Iranian fighters, ISIS, and Hezbollah in Syria; Syrian rebels in Lebanon; and many other examples. Iran is the leader of one side, Saudi Arabia is the main backer of the other, while the Kurds are concerned with maintaining their areas of control and are trying to stay out of the conflict.

The most significant result of the analysis is that the continued existence of Syria and Iraq as unified states is now in question. Practically speaking, Syria has already split into three areas, each controlled by one of the three elements listed above. Iraq has also effectively split into Kurdish and Arab zones, with Sunni and Shia groups fighting over the latter.

In many ways, Lebanon ceased to function as a unified state some time ago; since Hezbollah essentially functions as a de facto mini-state of its own. The Lebanese Sunnis lack a military tradition and have proved helpless in the face of Iran’s support for Hezbollah. But now, the emergence of the Syrian rebels and the growing popularity of Islamism among the Sunni underclass may be altering this balance. This appears to be borne out by the recent surge in Sunni violence against Hezbollah, which is the result of an attempt by Syrian jihadis and other rebels—in concert with their local allies—to bring the war to Lebanon.

Taken together, this indicates that a massive paradigm shift is underway in much of the Middle East. The eclipse of Arab nationalist dictatorships in Iraq and Syria, the historical failure to develop a unified national identity in these states, their mixed ethnic and sectarian makeup, and the U.S.’s withdrawal from its dominant position in the region—with the resulting emergence of a Saudi-Iranian rivalry—have all combined to produce an extraordinary result: A region-wide sectarian war is now taking place in the areas still officially referred to as Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.

For the West, as in the region itself, this has very serious implications. Dealing with it effectively will required an equally massive paradigm shift in strategic thinking on the Middle East, one that is capable of dispensing with previous illusions and admitting that sovereign borders once regarded as sacrosanct are swiftly becoming meaningless.

There are new borders taking shape, defined by sectarian divisions that the West ignores at its peril. Despite fantasies of withdrawing from the region, the security of global energy supplies and the maintenance of regional stability are still essential to Western interests. The West has as large a stake in the outcome of this sectarian conflict as the regional players involved. If it cannot adapt to the new Middle East that is swiftly taking shape, it will find itself on the losing side.

Jonathan Spyer is a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.

The concluding paragraphs are why we thought highly about the article even we had to make some changes in it – and now again – we do not think the Western powers – the United States and the former Middle East colonial Powers of Britain and France have to try to keep onto the internal borders of the fictional States of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, they helped create years ago, and then helped maintain by helping the dictatorial and monarchic regimes that they helped institute.

It is obvious – if the Iran led Shia forces and allies come out victorious in Syria, there will be immediate follow-ups in Bahrain and the oil regions of Eastern Saudi Arabia itself – regions with clear Shia majorities.

As we said, the self preservation of the Saudi regime, that is if Saudi Arabia wants indeed to be considered as half of the tongues that hold together the Middle East – takes them to Jerusalem/Tel Aviv/Ramallah – and this might not be what the original article intended.

That article wanted the Saudis to travel to Washington instead – but really – President Obama with the US experience in Iraq and Afghanistan is best advised to let the Arabs stew in their own pot, go for alternate energy, help China go for alternate energy as well – so they are not dependent on this imaginary Middle East source of global oil either. After all – the US has already lost the oil of Iraq and the contracts now are with China – who imagines the US thinks they will still manage the Saudi oil? The only ones still ready to hang on to strong positions in the region are the Israelis – and that is where the Saudis could find real brothers. Trying  to differentiate between varieties of Islamic extremists will not help create that devil with talent to know the difference between an Al-Qaeda Sunni who works well with the Iranian Shia and the Iraqi Sunni who still likes Saudi money.

Green Prophet Headlines – El Gouna: Egypt builds MENA’s first carbon-neutral city

El Gouna: Egypt builds MENA’s first carbon-neutral city

Posted: 15 Feb 2014 09:23 PM PST

El Gouna, a resort city on Egypt’s Red Sea Riviera, is set to become the first carbon-neutral city in that nation, in Africa, and likely the entire Middle East North Africa (MENA) region. Masdar City, in continuing development in Abu Dhabi, initially targeted zero-carbon status, but has yet to hit that goal.
Image of El Gouna from Shutterstock

The ambitious development agreement was signed last week by the Egyptian Ministry of State for Environmental Affairs, the Italian Ministry of Environment and El Gouna City.

Dr. Laila Iskandar, Egyptian Minister of State for Environmental Affairs, told Trade Arabia, “This agreement will help the Egyptian government to achieve a significant breakthrough in the fields of environment and tourism, enhancing Egypt’s global image and opening the door for Egyptian tourism projects and cities to rank among the leading carbon-neutral entities.”

El Gouna is already hailed as Egypt’s most environmentally-friendly vacation destination.  It’s captured Green Globe and Travelife certifications and was selected as the pilot location for the Green Star Hotel Initiative (GSHI).

Launched in 2007, GSHI is a cooperative effort between public and private sectors, the Egyptian and German tourism industries, and supported by key technical consultants.  They promote use of environmental management systems and environmentally sound operations to improve environmental performance and to increase competitiveness of the Egyptian hotel industry.

Priority projects include conservation of natural resources such as clean beaches, healthy marine life and protected areas, which are the backbone of the Red Sea Riviera and the nation’s eco-tourism market.

Mr. Hisham Zaazou, Egyptian Minister of Tourism, told Trade Arabia, “We will also be working on implementing this project in other Egyptian cities.”

from: Langston James Goree VI of Canada -	January 24, 2014

Langston James Goree VI via lists.iisd.ca	Jan 24 (2 days ago)
to Energy-l

World Future Energy Summit (WFES) 2014

20-22 January 2014 | Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

www.iisd.ca/irena/irenaa4/

The summary of this meeting is now available in PDF format at www.iisd.ca/download/pdf/sd/crsvol187num14e.pdf and in HTML format at www.iisd.ca/irena/irenaa4/html/crsvol187num14e.html 

20-22 January 2014 | Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

www.iisd.ca/irena/irenaa4/

The summary of this meeting is now available in PDF format at www.iisd.ca/download/pdf/sd/crsvol187num14e.pdf and in HTML format at www.iisd.ca/irena/irenaa4/html/crsvol187num14e.html 

The World Future Energy Summit (WFES) took place in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE) from 20 to 22 January.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) organized and participated in a range of events at the Summit.

This report summarizes discussions at select IRENA events including side events on the Global Atlas for Renewable Energy, Financing the Africa Clean Energy Corridor, Risk Coverage for Renewable Energy Investment, Project Navigator, Grid Integration and Energy Storage, Renewable Energy Investment in the Gulf Cooperation Council and Business Models for Renewable Energy Deployment in Cities.

The report also covers the Renewable Energy Ministerial Roundtable.

——————————-

Looking at the report we found of special interest the

RENEWABLE ENERGY MINISTERIAL ROUNDTABLE

as it was focused at a politically important constituency – Small Islands Independent States – SIDS – who will have their meeting right  ahead of the 2014 UN General Assembly.

On Monday evening, IRENA Director-General Amin moderated the high-level roundtable on renewable energy. Referring to the High-level Discussion on the IRENA preparations for the 3rd International Conference on small island developing States (SIDS), he asked delegates how IRENA can assist in the upscaling and implementation of renewable energy.

Prime Minister Henry Tuakeu Puna, Cook Islands, introduced the blue-green economy concept with several examples, including green tourism development, sanitation, fisheries and marine protected areas. Noting that SIDS are scattered throughout the world, he encouraged attending ministers and delegates to work together.

Rolph Payet, Minister of Environment and Energy, Seychelles, lauded IRENA for placing emphasis on renewable energy development in SIDS. He underscored that in small islands, energy provision is linked to other issues, such as tourism and waste management, suggesting waste-to-energy developments.

Thoriq Ibrahim, Minister of Environment and Energy, Maldives, asked how investments in renewable energy and waste management could be coupled.

Prime Minister Siale?ataongo Tu?ivakan?, Tonga, stressed affordability in the provision of clean energy, calling on IRENA as a transparent authority on the matter to build public support.

Josephine Stowers, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Samoa, expressed gratitude for the financial assistance provided by the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development and IRENA, suggesting the launch of a pacific partnership on renewables at the 3rd International Conference on SIDS in Samoa in September 2014.

Vete Sakaio, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Public Utilities, Tuvalu, underscored his country’s commitment and political will on sustainable development, stating that Tuvalu aims to have 100% renewable energy by 2020.

Mike Burrell, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, New Zealand, commended IRENA’s strong leadership to encourage the growth of renewable energy in New Zealand and with its SIDS partners.

Director-General Amin concluded with the suggestion that IRENA could support studies and capacity building focused on, inter alia: grid extension and grid stability; technology briefs on options to reduce inter-island diesel consumption and renewable alternatives for inter-island transportation; and desalination alternatives

Also of political interest was the meeting organized by the Mayor of the second largest Cypriote municipality and who had on board a technical speaker from Israel.

The side event on the Global Atlas for Renewable Energy took place on Monday afternoon, moderated by Nicolas Fichaux, IRENA.

Fichaux highlighted that 65 countries currently participate in the initiative that includes all six renewables covered by IRENA’s mandate. He explained that the Atlas provides an open access and full dataset for a variety of user groups.

Referring to ongoing activities in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) region, Nicola Bugatti, ECOWAS Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency, highlighted efforts to provide regional and country-level data on renewable energy, including country profiles, interactive maps, analyses and trends.

Jake Badger, Technical University of Denmark, described the Wind Atlas, emphasizing, inter alia: micro-scale modeling; wind resource data accounting with high-resolution effects; unified methodology for benchmarking among different countries and regions; and aggregated data and upscaled analyses for energy planners and policymakers.

Lionel Menard, MINES Paris Tech, discussed a data catalogue which conducts “metadata exercises” to gather information, serving as a brokering machine to describe energy resources in a unified, open, standard and interoperable format.

Thomas Wanderer, German Aerospace Centre, stressed linking socioeconomic data within the Atlas, including technical implications, country profiles, energy-use statistics and policy relevant information.

Jacinto Estima, Masdar Institute, and Xabier Nicuesa, National Renewable Energy Center, Spain, presented the universal data reader to make wind and solar energy data visible and comprehensive, expressing the need for scalable data sets and data about relevant time and seasonal variation.

Daniel Getman, National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL), US, referred to NREL’s participation in the Atlas’s initial design and development, emphasizing the importance of sharing data and using standardized data in order to be compatible with IRENA’s Atlas.

During discussion, participants addressed: dissemination plans for the Atlas; a focus on data quality; and collaboration with relevant partners.

But then when it came to Africa we found in the report lots of dreams that prove nothing was learned as of yet. Money just does not fall of trees and we feel this part has to be restudied or else there will be no progress in Africa.

The report says:

FINANCING THE AFRICA CLEAN ENERGY CORRIDOR

The side event on financing the Africa Clean Energy Corridor took place on Monday afternoon. IRENA Deputy Director-General Frank Wouters introduced the initiative that seeks to link power systems from ‘Cairo to Cape Town.’

Isaac Kiva, Ministry of Energy and Petroleum, Kenya, discussed experiences in Kenya. He listed risks, such as: integrity of measurement; commercial viability; and political stability, and shared the experience of setting up a risk mitigation facility to help private sector investment in drilling for geothermal potential.

Ingolf Dietrich, German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, expressed support for the Africa Clean Energy Corridor, highlighting the strong signal it sends on the importance of a regional approach. He discussed issues that complicate project viability and bankability, highlighting political stability and capacity.

Youssef Arfaoui, African Development Bank, shared experiences on concessional funding instruments such as the Clean Investments Fund and the Clean Technology Fund. He referenced projects in Kenya carried out in collaboration with the government that use Partial Risk Guarantees. He also discussed experiences in Djibouti where geothermal drilling was completed to confirm resources before the private sector joined, thus enabling the public sector.

Michael Eckhart, Citigroup, Inc., differentiated the Citigroup’s approach to finance, emphasizing that its clients are corporations, not governments, and encouraged parties interested in bringing Citigroup to Africa to do so by going through their clients. He highlighted the recent Green Bond Principles that provide voluntary guidelines for the development and issuance of Green Bonds, underscoring that if 10 to 20% of the US$ 7 trillion a year bond market were to go green, there would be more funding for Africa to access.

Mokgadi Modise, Department of Energy, South Africa, shared the South African experience with public private partnerships used to protect customers from increased energy costs. Dietrich commented that the bidding system deployed in South Africa is an inspiration to addressing the challenges with the feed-in tariff system in Germany.

More enlightening was the side event “Renewable energy investment in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), moving beyond targets: opportunities and challenges” took place on Wednesday morning and afternoon in partnership with the UAE Ministry for Foreign Affairs, IRENA and the Renewable Energy Industry Advisory Board (RIAB) of the International Energy Agency (IEA).

WELCOMING REMARKS: Matar Al Neyadi, Undersecretary of Energy, UAE, welcomed participants to a special session of the RIAB of IEA and IRENA, reflecting the GCC’s regional priority on renewable energy deployment. He clarified that the discussion has evolved from a focus on the business case for renewable energy to how to meet ambitious targets and sustain economic growth to unlock the renewable energy potential in the region.

Roberto Vigotti, IEA, discussed RIAB’s work with selected volunteers to provide strategic advice and participate in outreach initiatives and highlighted upcoming events.

 Hans Jorgen Koch, Chair of IEA Working Party on Renewable Energy Technologies, IEA, drew attention to challenges to a low-carbon economy posed by fossil fuel subsidies, calling for a delicate and balanced approach to resolution.

Maria van der Hoeven, IEA, spoke of global shifting trends in supply and demand for energy that has opened the market in the GCC, acknowledging drivers such as economic growth, availability of natural resources and ambition.

IRENA Director-General Amin noted the increasing clarity of opportunities in the region, stressing that the way forward is through transparent policy frameworks, value addition and interconnected grids. On finance, he addressed the need to de-risk investments potentially through a multilateral framework.

Arthouros Zervos, Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21), noted growth that is shifting the role of the GCC region from a fossil fuel exporter to a leader in renewable energy.  AND WE HOPE THESE WERE NOT JUST COMPLIMENTS.

UAE – Global leaders to discuss renewable energy today

MENAFN – Khaleej Times – 21/01/2014

ABU DHABI – Global leaders, decision-makers, technologists and business executives are assembling in the capital today to discuss matters relating to renewable energy.The World Future Energy Conference (WFES), which is the largest summit of energy experts, will share the best international practices, unveil new products and discuss sustainable solutions to tackle present and future energy challenges. As the centerpiece of the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, WFES 2014 expects to receive 30,000 attendees from over 172 countries, up from the 152 countries that participated last year. Held under the patronage of General Shaikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, the seventh edition of the World Future Energy Summit runs from January 20-22, 2014 at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre on the theme ‘Powering the Future of Energy Innovation and Investment.’ Since its inception in 2008, WFES has grown to become the leading discussion platform for renewable energy, clean technology and sustainability, and it is now considered the pre-eminent international event for government and industry decision makers to find viable, sustainable solutions to the world’s growing energy challenges. Hosted by Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy company, WFES 2014 is the centerpiece of the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, the largest ever gathering on sustainability in the Middle East. The event comprises a world-class conference that offers an unparalleled forum for political, business and intellectual debate and a large-scale exhibition which facilitates networking and transactions between manufacturers, suppliers and customers across both the public and private sectors. Global decision and opinion makers include UAE Minister of Energy Suhail bin Mohamed Faraj Fares Al Mazrouei; Rachel Kyte, vice-president for sustainable development at the World Bank; and Maria van der Hoeven, executive director of the International Energy Agency. Around 125 speakers will address delegates during the conference programme, on topics such as waste-to-energy, natural gas and the evolving energy mix, energy efficiency, and renewable technology innovation. Other high-level speakers at the event include Marie-Jose Nadeau, president of the World Energy Council; Saif Al Sayari, executive officer of energy solutions, Taqa; Santiago Seage, CEO of Abengoa Solar; and Kazuo Furukawa, chairman of the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organisation. More than 900 exhibiting companies will take part in WFES, International Water Summit, and the inaugural EcoWASTE, with more than 200 new products to be unveiled at the three shows. New and expanded exhibition features at WFES this year include the Project and Finance Village, showcasing over 20 renewable energy projects from the region and beyond.

UAE – 15 years jail for woman who tortured and beat maid to death MENAFN – Khaleej Times – January 21, 2014 from Abu Dhabi – The torture caused severe injuries to the Ethiopian maid, which got infected due to lack of medical treatment and led, along with other factors, to her death. A woman accused of torturing her two housemaids, and beating and abusing them regularly – resulting in the death of one of them – has been sentenced to 15 years in prison. The 45-year-old Emirati, R.A., who works as a public relations officer, is believed to have subjected her Ethiopian and Filipina maids to daily beatings, and physical and mental torture. The torture caused severe injuries to the Ethiopian maid, which got infected due to lack of medical treatment and led, along with other factors, to her death. R.A. has been given an additional one month in jail by the Court of First Instance for denying the victim medical treatment. Her husband, a 42-year-old policeman, A.A., who allegedly watched R.A. physically abuse the maids and deprive them of their freedom by locking them up in the bathroom, has been sentenced to three years in prison for being an accessory to the crimes. He tightly secured his villa in Nad-Al-Hamar to prevent the maids from escaping. The couple earlier denied charges of false imprisonment, deprivation of freedom with the use of force, physical and mental torture to death and causing bodily harm. The Filipina maid, 29, who survived the torture, which lasted for a couple of months, told the prosecutor that her employer used to beat her, and deny her food. She also forced her to drink a mix of detergents when she was dissatisfied with the cleaning of the toilet. The maid said R.A. threatened her with jail and intimidated her with their connections in the police and immigration. R.A. locked the two maids in the bathroom fixed with a camera, through which she would monitor them after she left for work in the morning. She also photographed them in compromising positions and threatened to make the pictures public. She fed the victims a piece of onion, sugar and salt for five days. She gave better food to the deceased maid after she lost consciousness due to the constant beating and malnutrition. The victim’s injuries got infected, but R.A. refused to take her to the hospital due to the fear of being held accountable. A forensic expert said the deceased weighed only 37kg when she died. Torture, malnutrition and negligence of injuries contributed to her death. The victim’s blood sample also contained traces of a pesticide. The verdict is subject to appeal within 15 days.

IT IS ALL ABOUT SOLAR ENERGY – Direct Solar and Wind Energy that can replace fossil carbon already now!
When it comes to heavy trucks – the CNG industry comes into play as well – so it is not just that electricity replaces the need for gasoline – but natural gas will replace the need for diesel as well – so here we will ask ourselves eventually – who still needs a petroleum refinery?

17 Cleantech Champions

 cleantechnica.com/2014/01/01/10-c…

1. ELON MUSK – Tesla Motors, Solar City …

JIGAR SHAH -  SunEdison, Carbon War Room, Jigar Shah Consulting …

3. CARLOS GOSH – Nissan, Renault, Electic Vehicles …

4. DENISE BODE – AWEA (Wind Energy)

5. Mark Z. Jacobson – Renewable Energy for New York

6. DANNY KENNEDY – Sungevity Solar, The Solar Foundation, Solar on the White House …

LYNN JURICH – SunRun …

8. HERMANN SCHEER – died 2010, was Member of German Parliament who fought for Feed-In-Tariff (FIT) …

9. LISA JACKSON (US EPA) & STEVEN CHU (US Department of Energy) – for their leadership

10. BILLY PARISH – Solar Mosaic

11. SULTAN AHMED AL JABER – Masdar, AbuDhabi

12.  ADNAN Z. AMIN – IRENA, Abu Dhabi

13. BOB LUTZ – GM Cherry Volt, Via Motors VTRUX – an electric car proponent despite being a conservative Global Warming denier.

14. AL GORE – Global Warming tied to fossil fuels.

15. NAWAL AL-HOSANY – Masdar and the Zayed Future Energy Prize. Abu Dhabi

16. DAN YATES & ALEX LASKEY – Opower

17. PAUL SCOTT – Plug-In America, Nissan Leaf

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17 Cleantech Champions

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There are actually thousands of cleantech champions out there, and many of them are CleanTechnica readers. I was actually a bit hesitant to make this list because of that — there are going to be a lot of people not on this list that really could be. However, in honor of the tremendous work some of these people are doing, I felt compelled to write this up.

Importantly, beyond the main work they are doing, this piece is particularly focused on highlighting cleantech leaders who make their presence and views known in the public eye. We’re in the business in moving the public pendulum towards cleantech, and I greatly value the cleantech business and science leaders who also do so. Lack of awareness and lack of the strong citizen/political push that could come from greater awareness are perhaps now the largest barriers to the cleantech revolution. We need cleantech leaders and “business celebrities” or “political celebrities” who really know the story to get out there and help in informing the public.

17. Paul Scott 

Founder of Plug In America, leading Nissan Leaf salesman, former solar salesman. Overall, one of the leading EV advocates in the world, and has been for a long time. Gets out there and writes articles on sites such as CleanTechnica, and also good at coming up with grand ideas for getting more attention on electric cars.

Where to follow Paul online? Twitter

16. Opower guys, Dan Yates & Alex Laskey

Dan & Alex co-founded what has become perhaps the best home energy management company in the world. They also do a good job of getting out into the public eye and giving excellent presentations.

Where to follow Dan & Alex online? Dan: Twitter. Alex: Twitter?

15. Nawal Al-Hosany

Dr Nawal Al-Hosany is director of sustainability at Masdar and also the director of the Zayed Future Energy Prize. With Masdar being a $15 billion effort to become something like the Silicon Valley of cleantech, her leaders is pretty huge. Nonetheless, Nawal somehow finds a way to provide CleanTechnica and others with original guest posts and interviews in order to advance global cleantech awareness.

Where to follow Nawal online? Twitter and maybe also LinkedIn

14. Al Gore

As one of the most notable figures working to fight global warming, Al has to be on this list. While he focuses a lot on the problems of global warming and fossil fuels (not exactly the focus of this list), he also delves into cleantech topics quite a bit. And there’s really no possibility to untie the important global warming–cleantech link.

Where to follow Al online? Google+, Twitter, his blog

13. Bob Lutz

Bob was a key GM notable behind the Chevy Volt. He is also now pioneering electric trucks with the Via Motors VTRUX. Bob gotten on Fox News and also written articles on conservative media outlets — places where he has some sway as a global warming-denying extreme conservative — in order to defend electric vehicles. Despite coming from a career in the highly entrenched auto industry, Bob says that an “electric car future [is] definitely coming.”

Where to follow Bob online? Good question…

12. Adnan Z Amin

Director-General of the International Renewable Energy Agency. I think that says enough, but I’ll add that Adnan gets out there and writes some great articles on blogs around the world (including here). Furthermore, he gives some of the best presentations out there on renewable energy.

Where to follow Adnan online? Good question…

11. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber

I’ve already mentioned Masdar. Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber is the CEO of this cleantech monster. The responsibility of that massive effort must create quite a bit of pressure, yet this CEO seems to handle the position with tremendous ease and coolness. He also delivers exceptional presentations on a variety of cleantech matters. Hopefully I’ll be able to nab an interview with him at the upcoming Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, but I’m not so sure — last year, he was very quickly zipped in and out of the numerous events where he was speaking.

Where to follow Al Jaber online? Huffington Post?

10. Billy Parish

Billy is the co-founder and president of Mosaic (originally termed Solar Mosaic). Mosaic is already having a big effect in the solar energy space through the possibility of decentralized investment in solar energy projects — solar energy investing for “the common Joe.” But Mosaic’s offering still hasn’t hit the majority of the US or other countries (at least, the option for “the common Joe” to invest hasn’t). I think it will see tremendous growth in the years to come, but even if it didn’t, it has had a profound impact on the solar energy market. Billy does an excellent job of getting the good solar word out there to the public, which includes posting articles here on CleanTechnica. Overall, Mosaic’s blog is one of the best solar blogs around, which I assume Billy has had some influence over.

Where to follow Billy online? Twitter

9. Lisa Jackson & Steven Chu

Both Lisa and Steven were exceptional in the roles as the director of the EPA and US Secretary of Energy, respectively. I think they would have done even much more if not held back by higher-ups, but even with the opportunities they were given, they were excellent at promoting cleantech and cutting into the harm caused by fossil fuels. Lisa and Steven stepped down from the roles in the US government this year, but both have gone on to do other important work in the cleantech space. Lisa is actually now the vice president of environmental initiatives at Apple, the high-valued brand in the world. Lisa and Steven were both often in the public eye and were very good public communicators and verbal champions of the cleantech revolution.

When a popular Onion joke about Steven sleeping with a solar panel came out, the clever Nobel-prize winner put out a great response:

“I just want everyone to know that my decision not to serve a second term as Energy Secretary has absolutely nothing to do with the allegations made in this week’s edition of the Onion. While I’m not going to confirm or deny the charges specifically, I will say that clean, renewable solar power is a growing source of U.S. jobs and is becoming more and more affordable, so it’s no surprise that lots of Americans are falling in love with solar.”

Where to follow Lisa & Steven online? Lisa: Twitter. Steven: good question… (Steven, please share a bit with us on Google+ or Twitter! I suggest Google+ since it has a little bit of math in its name.)

8. Hermann Scheer

I was initially making this list about current cleantech champions, but then Herman Scheer came to mind and I couldn’t leave him out. If he were alive today, he’d surely be higher up on this list. Hermann was one of the key people behind the German feed-in tariff (FiT), which has transformed renewable energy sectors, especially the solar energy sector, globally. I would say that the FiT is inarguably the most important renewable energy policy in history, and Hermann was crucial to its implementation.

Unfortunately, Hermann did rather suddenly in 2010 at the age of 69. As summarized on Wikipedia: “Fourteen days before his death he was seen live on German television^[7] making a statement in the Bundestag about a highly explosive (“hochbrisant”) 60 billion euro breach of contract (“Vertragsbruch”) by Germany’s privately owned nuclear power corporations.^[8] He suddenly died in a hospital in Berlin from heart failure^[9] after an unspecified short and severe illness.^[10]“

6 (tie). Lynn Jurich

Lynn Jurich is the co-founder and co-CEO of Sunrun, which pioneered solar leasing and PPAs for homeowners and is now apparently the “#1 home solar company.” The rather short Wikipedia bio for Lynn is actually quite good, so I’ll just use that here: “Jurich was named as one of the Ten Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs by Fortune in 2009, and received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2010 award in Northern California together with SunRun co-founder Ed Fenster. Jurich serves on the Sierra Club Foundation Board of Directors and holds an MBA and BS from Stanford University.” I haven’t seen Lynn in the public eye much, but I have seen one or two videos with her.

Where to follow Lynn online? Good question…

6 (tie). Danny Kennedy

Danny Kennedy came from a Greenpeace background to start up one of the biggest solar companies in the world, Sungevity. He’s now the president of Sungevity and also serves on the boards of The Solar Foundation and Mosaic. Other notable side projects include spearheading the “Solar on the White House” push and writing Rooftop Revolution: How Solar Power Can Save Our Economy—and Our Planet—from Dirty Energy. Danny is quite often interviewed by the media and does an excellent job — perhaps the best around — at communicating the… well, rooftop revolution. A couple of videos I highly, highly recommend are this TEDx talk and this recent interview on Bloomberg TV.

Where to follow Danny online? Twitter (where he even does solar-inspired shout-outs to little guys like me) and Google+ (one of the first cleantech leaders I’ve seen there).

5. Mark Z Jacobson

Mark Z Jacobson has done exceptional research in the renewable energy sector. But that’s obviously not enough to land someone on this list. Mark has also led by getting the word out (perhaps more than anyone else) that renewable energy is indeed capable of powering the world with current technology, and cost competitive. This year, he even showed up on the Late Show with David Letterman to talk about powering New York with renewable energy.

Where to follow Mark online? Twitter (he even posts drafts of research he’s working on there!)

4. Denise Bode

She actually stepped down from her role as the CEO of AWEA around this time last year, but she was so instrumental and so effective at growing the wind energy business in the US (and, thus, globally), that I thought she deserved to be pretty high on this list. For a number of reasons, wind energy is further along (as far as low costs and high capacity) than solar energy. Denise was an excellent face and voice of the wind industry, and even had the courage and ability to go to battle with misinformants on Fox News. As a Republican, she had a bit more sway with Republican politicians, voters, and media agencies, but she still had to battle with a massive amount of misinformation there. And I think she did that exceptionally well.

Where to follow Denise online? Huffington Post?

3. Carlos Ghosn

Alongside Elon Musk (sorry, he didn’t make the list ), Carlos Ghosn is probably the most notable EV advocate out there. As the head of both Nissan and Renault (Chairman & CEO of both), he also has a lot of power to make magic happen. Right now, with a couple of medium-market EV models available and a fairly aggressive push to have his companies lead the electric revolution, Carlos definitely claims the top spot for electric vehicle sales. Also, I just love this man. His comments are so spot-on, so sharp, and cut through the BS faster than Fox News creates it (well, I guess I wouldn’t go that far). I love his attitude and his wicked-fast mind, and I look forward to seeing him continue to transform and grow Nissan and Renault.

Where to follow Carlos online? Good question….

1. Jigar Shah

I had a really hard time deciding which one of these top two people should be #1, so I finally decided to make it a tie. Jigar Shah founded SunEdison, which pioneered a financing model that would lead to explosive growth in the solar industry. He grew SunEdison into a solar giant and then moved on to other things. From 2009 to 2012, Jigar was the CEO of the Carbon War Room, “a global organization founded by Richard Branson and Virgin Unite to harness the power of entrepreneurship to unlock the potential of proven climate change solution technologies to be deployed at scale,” as Wikipedia summarizes it. He was fundamental in the growth and influence of the Carbon War Room, but then moved on to consulting as CEO of Jigar Shah Consulting (odd name…). Jigar serves on the board of more cleantech startups than there are months in the year, probably more than there are days in the month — I’d actually be curious to know the exact number. His influence in the industry is broad, deep, and powerful. He is consistently publishing insightful articles (including a CleanTechnica one with a very counter-intuitive message), answering interview questions, and participating in podcasts.

Where to follow Jigar online? Twitter, Google+, and perhaps LinkedIn. He’s all over the place.

1. Elon Musk

Come on, this was more obvious than daylight. The man is CEO and Chief Product Architect of Tesla Motors, which has transformed the electric vehicle and arguably even the entire automobile industry. He’s also the chairman of SolarCity, one of the largest solar power companies in the world. Earlier this year, he was named to the TIME 100 list, a list of the “most influential” people in the world. He is often making public statements about solar and EVs, and he even tweets a bit.

Where to follow Elon online? Twitter, where he regularly engages with the public, makes some quite big announcements (and bigger hints), and even tweets stories from simple bloggers like me. To give an indication of his influence, Elon has nearly 500,000 followers in the land of the little blue bird, about 100 times more than the person on this list with the third-most followers (Jigar Shah — nearly 5,000) and only behind former US Vice President Al Gore, who has about 2.7 million.

 

Think I missed a beat by not including someone? Drop that person’s name in the comments below.

 

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Tags: ‘Rooftop Revolution, Adnan Z Amin, al gore, Alex Laskey, AWEA, Billy Parish, Bob Lutz, Carbon War Room, carlos ghosn, Carlos Ghosn electric cars, Carlos Ghosn electric vehicles, Chevy Volt, Dan Yates, Danny Kennedy, Denise Bode, DOE, Elon Musk, EPA, Fox News, GM, Hermann Scheer, International Renewable Energy Agency, IRENA, Jigar Shah, Lisa Jackson, Lynn Jurich, Mark Z. Jacobson, Masdar, Mosaic, Nawal Al-Hosany, Nissan, Nissan Leaf, opower, Paul Scott, Plug in America, renault, Republicans, solar mosaic, SolarCity, Steven Chu, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, SunEdison, Sungevity, sunrun, Tesla, The Solar Foundation, twitter, US, Via Motors, Via Motors VTRUX, VTrux, Zayed Future Energy Prize

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Zachary Shahan is the director of CleanTechnica, the most popular cleantech-focused website in the world, and Planetsave, a world-leading green and science news site. He has been covering green news of various sorts since 2008, and he has been especially focused on solar energy, electric vehicles, and wind energy for the past four years or so. Aside from his work on CleanTechnica and Planetsave, he’s the Network Manager for their parent organization – Important Media – and he’s the Owner/Founder of Solar Love, EV Obsession, and Bikocity. To connect with Zach on some of your favorite social networks, go to ZacharyShahan.com and click on the relevant buttons.

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Green Prophet Headlines – Dubai exploded 400,000 fireworks in record-shattering NYE display [video]

mailed-by: feedburner.bounces.google.com – Dubai exploded 400,000 fireworks in record-shattering NYE display [video]

Posted: 03 Jan 2014 01:44 PM PST

Dubai rang in 2014 with a record-shattering fireworks display. In an effort to break the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest fireworks extravaganza previously held by Kuwait, the emirate exploded a whopping 400,000 fireworks in less than 10 minutes.

Choreographed by America’s Phil Grucci, Dubai’s fireworks display was spread across 100 kilometers and lasted six full minutes.

The event took 10 months to plan and more than 200 pyrotechnicians arranged around The Palm and The World artificial islands ensured the display went off without a hitch.

Fireworks used were purchased in China, Spain and the United States, according to The National, and were hauled to the launching site by a long series of trucks.

We’re being given the challenge of breaking the world record,” said Grucci, who has worked in Dubai in the past, “so the scale of this is nothing that anybody has had the opportunity to oversee.”

Kuwait’s previous record was shattered by Dubai’s over-the-top performance, where nearly 100,000 fireworks were set off every minute.

“[Kuwait's] firework display stretched over 5 km (3.11 miles) of seafront, started at 8 p.m. and lasted 64 minutes,” according to the Guinness World Record website. “Event organizers Parente Fireworks srl and Filmmaster MEA produced the event, which included the pyrotechnic display and a lights and sound show. Preceding this, an airshow was staged in the afternoon.”

Albeit impressive, the show somehow undoes all of the small steps that Dubai has taken over the last year to become a little less environmentally destructive.

While those that saw the show were extremely impressed and lauded Dubai’s efforts to draw tourists to the city, some commentators expressed regret over the extraordinary expense and extravagance.

“When I see this and remember that Gaza has been without electricity for 40 days,” said Oussama Bargougui on YouTube “I really feel ashamed to be Arabic.”

Screengrab from Dubai Media video

—————————————————————————–

Above reminded me of the Arab UN official supervisor who at 60 years age bragged of just having had a baby.

Proposed vertical farms like this one in Dubai may be the only way for supplying food to Middle East countries.

Dickson D. Despommier is a professor of public health at Columbia University in New York, and if he gets his way, the future will be full of “vertical farms’ (a farm on every floor) in cities across the world, including major players in the Middle East.

In a recent oped column in the New York Times, Despommier looked into his crystal ball and came up with these insights as to why.

“If climate change and population growth progress at their current pace, in roughly 50 years farming as we know it will no longer exist. This means that the majority of people could soon be without enough food or water. But there is a solution that is surprisingly within reach: Move most farming into cities, and grow crops in tall, specially-constructed buildings. It’s called vertical farming.”

More comments from his insightful article:

“….apply the vertical farm concept to countries that are water-challenged — the Middle East readily comes to mind — and suddenly things look less hopeless. For this reason the world’s very first vertical farm may be established there, although the idea has garnered considerable interest from architects and governments all over the world.”

“Vertical farms are now feasible, in large part because of a robust global greenhouse initiative that has enjoyed considerable commercial success over the last 10 years. [Editor’s note: Dr. Despommier has started a business to build vertical farms. ”

“Vertical farms would also make cities more pleasant places to live. The structures themselves would be things of beauty and grace. In order to allow plants to capture passive sunlight, walls and ceilings would be completely transparent. So from a distance, it would look as if there were gardens suspended in space.”

“When people ask me why the world still does not have a single vertical farm, I just raise my eyebrows and shrug my shoulders. Perhaps people just need to see proof that farms can grow several stories high.As
soon as the first city takes that leap of faith, the world’s first vertical farm could be less than a year away from coming to the aid of a hungry, thirsty world. Not a moment too soon.”

Vertical farms in Israel and other countries in the Middle East? At the moment, it sounds like science fiction, but what the future holds, no one knows for sure.

Dr Despommier might just be on to something very, very…..vertical!

::NY Times

More on vertical farms:
Vertical Farm In Dubai Uses Seawater To Sustain Crops
Will Farmers of the Future Work in Skyscrapers?

Iran deal recasts regional politics .

The “joint plan of action” agreed on by six world powers and Iran on Nov. 24 is in a short time proving to be a catalyst for a regional trend toward diplomacy and realism.

The mood is already shifting in the Gulf, where there had been resistance if not downright opposition at times to the negotiations with Iran. UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan visited Tehran this week for meetings with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, while the Kingdom of Bahrain invited Zarif to participate in the Manama Dialogue Regional Security Summit, organized by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, to be held Dec. 6-8, as reported by Ali Hashem for Al-Monitor.

In perhaps the most substantial shift, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia released a statement on Nov. 25 welcoming the joint plan of action, saying, “Saudi Arabia views the agreement as a primary step toward a comprehensive solution to the Iranian nuclear issue provided it leads to a Middle East and Gulf region free of all weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons.”

In Israel, despite a skeptical public and statements of alarm by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, there is also awareness among national security leaders that the deal with Iran may have its advantages, and that Israel is poorly served by putting itself at odds with the international coalition that forced Iran to negotiations.

Akiva Eldar captured the broader context of the Iran deal for Israel, writing, “The agreement with Iran was signed a short time after the agreement between the United States and Russia that brought about the removal of chemical weapons from Syria. Thus a much more concrete and immediate threat than the Iranian one was removed from the borders of Israel. The decision of the powers to wave a stick instead of landing a blow on the Iranian protectorate in Damascus should have signaled to Netanyahu that this would also be the route they chose to take in the talks with Tehran. It stands to reason that Iran will now be invited to contribute to a renewed effort to end the cruel civil war in Syria. We are witness to the beginning of Iran’s emergence from the international solitary confinement it entered following the revolution in 1979.”

Ben Caspit reports from Jerusalem, “There’s no panic at all among Israel’s professional military echelons. Nobody talks about a catastrophe or an imminent second Holocaust. People discuss the merits of the agreement with levelheadedness and discretion. After all, doomsday prophecies are not their thing. For this, we have Netanyahu.”

Dan Meridor, a member of the Likud Party and former deputy prime minister and minister of intelligence and atomic energy under Netanyahu, told Al-Monitor’s Mazal Mualem this week, “It’s a mistake to pick a fight with partners when we’re in the midst of a campaign against Iran, in which the Americans have the main role. Embarking on an offensive of attacks, criticism and scorekeeping harms the common struggle of large parts of the world, the United States, Europe and the Arab countries. The disputes do not help the struggle, but just give the Iranians a reason to gloat. Nothing is achieved by public disputes. The alliance between Israel and the United States is an important component of our powerful image. … Israel needs to be part of the world, to be a partner in this campaign.”

In the United States, there is popular support for the agreement with Iran. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released this week revealed that 44% of Americans support the interim agreement with Iran and only 22% oppose.

In Congress, while there is still skepticism about the deal, there also seems to be a trend toward legislation that emphasizes a congressional role in Iran’s compliance with the terms of the deal, rather than the introduction of new sanctions, during the six-month negotiation period. The Iran Nuclear Compliance Act of 2013, introduced Nov. 21 by Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is now pending before the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, which has Senate jurisdiction on sanctions bills.

As reported here last week, the man to watch is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who told NPR’s Diane Rehm that the interim agreement is an “important first step” and that he will look to both Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, on whether the Senate should hold hearings and consider more sanctions.

The conversations that have begun about Iran’s nuclear program are already having consequences beyond the nuclear file, including the Gulf, Turkey and Syria. While Kadri Gursel writes that the Turkish “reset” from its failed sectarian policies may require even deeper political changes, Ankara’s shift, which is a work in progress, is already good news for a political solution in Syria, especially with the Geneva II conference to be held on Jan. 22. A real peace process in Syria would mean relief for Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq, those countries most affected by the spillover of the war, the spike in terrorism and the flood of refugees.

A stable Syrian government, resulting from a successful Geneva II political process, perhaps following elections, would offer a chance for an Israel-Lebanon-Syria peace process. This would mean the eventual demilitarization of Hezbollah, whose raison d’etre is resistance to Israel’s occupation. The reintegration of Hezbollah forces into the Lebanese army and the normalization of Hezbollah solely as a Lebanese political party, and not an armed resistance force, would be a giant step toward solving Lebanon’s perpetual national crisis.

Any deal on Hezbollah would run through Damascus and Tehran, via Moscow’s good offices, en route to Jerusalem, as this column reported last week. While the United States cannot broker this deal, the future of Hezbollah is directly connected to the nuclear negotiations with Iran. For Iran to get relief from US oil and financial sanctions under the Iran Sanctions Act, the president must certify to Congress that Iran no longer seeks weapons of mass destruction, is no longer a state sponsor of terrorism and no longer represents a significant threat to US national security interests and allies. Hezbollah is considered a terrorist group by the United States. So questions about Iran’s nuclear program and its role in the region, including support for Hezbollah, are the endgame in any discussion of a comprehensive agreement.

The article we looked at is at: www.al-monitor.com/pulse/politics…

Then today’s Opinion Column by Roger Cohen: www.nytimes.com/2013/10/29/opinio… that starts:

” DUBAI — Here’s how the Saudis see it: President Obama has sold out the Syrian opposition, reinforced President Bashar al-Assad after having called for his departure, embarked on a dangerous duet with President Hassan Rouhani of Iran, played the wrong cards in Egypt, retreated from initial criticism of Israeli settlements that promised a more balanced American approach to Israel-Palestine, tilted toward the Shiites in the growing regional Sunni-Shiite confrontation, and generally undercut the interests of the kingdom.”

Both columns seem to forget that the real world is not based on heart feelings – not even when at the helm of a country sits a 89 year old monarch.

Nevertheless, Cohen notes “The Saudis, of course, always talk a good line and are happiest when others — read the United States — do the heavy lifting for them.” So now the Saudis will have figure out for themselves what heavy lifting their oil money can do for them. That for a start.

Then he says: “”But it is over Iran that the Saudis are most exercised — and it is not the Iranian nuclear program that has them so upset. Rather, it is the idea that the pre-revolutionary relationship between Iran and the United States could somehow be revived, extending Iranian influence in the region and relegating Saudi Arabia to being, as it once was, the lesser party of America’s “twin pillar” policy in the region.

The Saudis have already watched with concern as the U.S. invasion of Iraq served Iranian interests; they see Iran’s influence and military presence growing in Syria. What they fear above all is an Iranian irredentism aimed at stirring up of the Shiite populations in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.

It was not lost on Saudi Arabia that Rouhani wrote in The Washington Post in September that, “We must join hands to constructively work toward national dialogue, whether in Syria or Bahrain,” just a few days before Obama spoke at the United Nations of working to resolve “sectarian tensions” in Syria and Bahrain.

Nothing can set Saudi alarm bells ringing quite like that: U.S. and Iranian presidents speaking to each other on the telephone, having aired similar sentiments on Bahrain, where the Saudi-backed Sunni monarchy has engaged in fierce repression of an opposition led by members of the Shiite majority, which is pressing for broader rights and political inclusion.

It is hard to say whether Israel or Saudi Arabia is more anxious today over the possibility of an American-Iranian breakthrough. That possibility remains extremely remote. The right deal — one that prevents the Islamic Republic from going nuclear while drawing it back into the community of nations — is in the U.S. interest, but current Saudi fury is one measure of the difficulty and of a U.S. Middle Eastern policy that is falling short.“”

Trying to reach conclusions from above we observe:

(a) The Saudis are yet to announce officially to the UN that they give up their UN Security Council seat – and we ask why should they? Is it not much more forceful to let there an empty seat that they can fill whenever they decide to do so, and in the mean-time force the UN to start reviewing its procedures in order to have a way to handle such an unprecedented situation when a state does not participate for a longer period at the meetings?
The only precedent is a short time the Soviets left their UNSC seat empty and this led to the UN intervention in Korea. Ergo – keep an eye on the UN.

(b) The oil weapon has lost its power somewhat – so there are obvious repercussions when talking about the stand of Golf Community members.
The money weapon nevertheless has increased in value – so the Saudis and others of the Golf can still wield power.

(c) Everybody has a wish list and can tell the Saudis what to do – but after all the Saudis will find out that they know their self interests best.
So we expect that they will wake up to the reality that when it comes to confront Iran, the only strong power of the region they can rely on are the Israelis. The Israelis are the obvious opposing power to Iran and it would not be difficult to build an Israeli-Saudi practical alliance. It will start with the Saudis helping fund a Palestinian economy so the two sides – the Israelis and the Palestinians – can be separated into two well defined States bound together with an Arab backed economy. With this as a start, it will be left to the Iranians to see the advantages of retreating to their own borders and leave the basically Sunni region to evolve without Shia interference.

=============================================

UPDATED from an October 29, 2013 posting.

THE UPDATE IS FROM OCTOBER 30, 2013 NEWS:

Editorial

Allies in Revolt

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Published: October 29, 2013 27 Comments

Today’s Editorials

• Editorial: Putting More Controls on Painkillers  (October 30, 2013)

• Editorial: A Mixed Decision on the Texas Abortion Law (October 30, 2013)

Connect With Us on Twitter

For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.

Here’s a quick summary: Saudi Arabia and Israel are deeply worried about the Obama administration’s decision to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran — their mortal enemy. Saudi Arabia and Turkey are sore at President Obama’s refusal to become militarily involved in ousting President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, in particular his decision not to respond with military strikes to Mr. Assad’s use of chemical weapons. Mr. Obama instead chose a diplomatic deal under which Syria’s chemical weapons would be dismantled.

The Saudis are also unhappy that Mr. Obama withdrew support for Hosni Mubarak, the deposed Egyptian president, and then worked with Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood member who was elected to replace Mr. Mubarak but was later thrown out.

All three countries have resorted to threats and displays of pique to make their points. Saudi Arabia renounced a United Nations Security Council seat it had worked hard to win because, it said, the United States and the United Nations had failed to achieve a Mideast peace agreement or solve the Syria crisis, as if either objective could be easily delivered by America alone. Although it is hard to see how other countries like China and Russia would be better alternatives, Saudi officials have gone so far as to complain that they regard the United States as unreliable and would look elsewhere for their security.

Meanwhile, Turkey, a NATO member, has said it would buy a long-range missile defense system worth $3.4 billion from China because China’s bid was lower than bids from the United States and Europe. The decision may also, however, have reflected Turkey’s annoyance with Mr. Obama’s Syria policy. (It’s a dumb deal, too, and Turkish officials now seem to be reconsidering it; China’s system will be hard to integrate with NATO equipment, thus undermining alliance defenses and Turkey’s.)

As for Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is doing his best to torpedo any nuclear deal with Iran, including urging Congress to impose more economic sanctions on Iran that could bring the incipient negotiations between Iran’s new government and the major powers to a halt.

Much of this anger at the United States is driven by a case of nerves. The Arab Spring uprisings shook the old order, plunged the region into chaos, created opportunities for Iran to expand its influence in Syria and Iraq and threatened to worsen the Sunni-Shiite divide. Saudi Arabia, a Sunni-majority country, in particular, fears an American rapprochement with Shiite-majority Iran.

But Mr. Obama’s first responsibility is to America’s national interest. And he has been absolutely right in refusing to be goaded into a war in Syria or bullied into squandering a rare, if remote, chance to negotiate an Iranian nuclear deal.

In addressing the United Nations last month, Mr. Obama reinforced his intention to narrow his regional diplomatic focus to the Iranian nuclear deal and an Israeli-Palestinian peace. Some have read this as weakness and retreat, rather than pragmatism. We wish he had put more emphasis on Egypt and Iraq. But his priorities make sense. His task now is to reassure the allies that the United States remains committed to their security.

—————————–

Also, the Iraqi leadership comes to Washington to ask to buy arms – this while having done nothing about uniting their country or alternatively letting it sub-divide to its three components – Shiia – Kurds – Sunni. Without this first Iraq will turn into another Syria with the Maliki, a Shiia,  government trying to surpress its Sunni and Kurdish minorities. What should the US President do? He clearly does not want to step back into the Iraqi morass that his predecessor has created.

JEWISH AUSTRIAN ARTIST SHOSHANA or SOSHANA Afroim or former SUSSANE Schueller,   PROMOTED BY THE AUSTRIAN EMBASSY,  SHOWS IN DUBAI.

For further interest please contact amos.schueller@gmx.net and visit our homepage www.soshana.com

Soshana Afroyim (born 1 September 1927, Vienna, Austria) is an Austrian painter of the Modernism period. She devoted her life to art and travelled around the world, where she had many exhibitions. During her journeys, she portrayed many well known personalities and her art developed in different directions. Her early period artwork was largely naturalistic in nature, showing landscapes and portraits. Later her style developed towards abstract art, strongly influenced by Asian calligraphy.

Susanne Schüller born in Vienna into a Jewish middle-class family. Father Fritz Schüller owned a cufflink factory, mother Margarethe Schüller was a sculptor. Soshana first went to the Rudolf Steiner School, but soon changed to the alternative Schwarzwald School. She started do paint and draw at a very young age. Her mother supported Soshana’s creativity and collected her works carefully.

At the age of eleven, Soshana witnessed the German annexation of Austria 1938. Her father who had been born in Brno, had a Czech passport and left the country first to prepare the way. Margarethe Schüller, Soshana and Maximilian the brather fled to Switzerland, then Paris, where Fritz Schueller had waited for them and finally in 1939 they reached London, where they would stay two years. Soshana attended the Northwood College and in 1940 the Chelsea Polytechnic School, where she had painting and drawing lessons and learned about fashion design.

Soshana’s father fled then to Spain and via Tangier he escaped to New York. In 1941 he managed to get an affidavit for his family and booked three tickets for the S.S. Madura, the last civil ship that would leave Europe. In 1941 Soshana, her mother and her brother arrived at Ellis Island.

In New York City Soshana enrolled at Washington Irving High School and attended painting classes under the guidance of artist Beys Afroyimwhom she eventually married in 1945 and their son Amos was born in 1946. The family eventually returned to Vienna in 1947, Amos was left with her father and Soshana went to Paris in 1952 to continue a life in the arts. in 1956 her attention turned to Asia, then Mexico in 1965 and then to the world at large eventually new York, then back to Vienna in 1985 where she lives now in a nursing home, and still paints every day.

Since 2005 her son Amos takes care of her work and organizes exhibitions and other projects. We have met the several times and wrote about her in the past.

Of special interest – I submit www.sustainabilitank.info/2008/09…

And while the Austrian government honored her with a special postal stamp, she showed in Vienna a large exhibit with paintings reminding the viewers of the Nazi times, extermination camps and Jewish revival in Israel.

Soshana says about her work that “it is suffering that helps you grow and develop, the struggle and conflict in life. Even the plants seem to struggle for light and space … I believe in a greater spirit of nature, from which each person is a part, here to play his role in life.” 

Soshana used drawing and painting as an outlet to deal with traumatic events she experienced in her life – like in a drawing, she called “Hitler as Cloun”.

Themes like The Cold War, the Yom Kippur War, the atomic age or terrorism can be found over and over again in Soshana’s Oeuvre.

When she returned to Vienna in 1985, she worked up the time of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust.

During Kurt Waldheim‘s election campaign in 1987/88, she made a series of paintings and collages, in which she incorporated Nazi propaganda texts. Soshana also painted motive cycles of the wars in Yugoslavia, the attacks on the World Trade Center or the wars on Iraq.

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Israel just had no public transportation for three days – it was the Jewish New Year celebration bridging to the weekly Sabbath – and the Orthodox Jews force the government not to use public funds to allow non-religious poor to enjoy nature during the holidays. To do so they have to use private transportation in order to get out of town.

But President Yohanan Peres stated that despite the memory of the Yom Kippur War of 1973 – people wanting to travel to the north of the country ought not to cancel their Holiday-trips, the Israeli Army and the Air Force are watching over them this year of internal fighting in Syria. In 1973 – 40 years ago, the Arab States attacked an unsuspecting Israel and eventually got the tremendous blow they deserved – but that after years may now strangely turn into an unforeseen victory of theirs. Israel made the mistake to hold on to the territories where they could have helped establish a Palestinian homeland on land that was liberated in 1967 from Arab occupation. Now the Syrians and Egyptians fight among themselves – each country with its own special problems. So do Lebanon and Iraq – that like Syria are not Nation-States – and never were, because of the Ottoman Empire rule in the region, and the fact they were stitched together by European Colonialists. Egypt is obviously a Nation State with a long past in history – so is Israel in spite of its deniers.

Should the US and Europe get involved in Syria? Was the US right to get involved in Iraq? should Putin be told off for his moves of restarting a new cold war on the skeletons of dead Syrians? The world has a new game in their Capital towns – but Israel? Is it to benefit from the fact that the real schism among forces of Islam and a budding resistance are just stirring? Will the Palestinians decide to aim for Israel protection from their retrogressive brothers? Will Israel understand what is right and helpful to their own cause?

In the meantime – out of a little over 8 million Israeli citizens – over one million took advantage of a peaceful holiday and celebrated nature. Our own setback – turns out that a masked individual killed with a knife-stabbing an Israeli in Kefar Ya’abetz ( a centrally located village ) which obviously is named after an historian Zeev Ya’abetz a relative of our Jawetz family. A reminder that this is the Middle East after all.

According to Al-Monitor:

“UN Leader’s Visit to Israel Shows Waning US Influence in Mideast.”

By: Ben Caspit for Al-Monitor Israel Pulse Posted on August 23.

While on a visit to Israel on Aug. 15-16, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon held some interesting talks, receiving the red carpet treatment from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who oversees the slow yet chanceless negotiations with the Palestinians.

I would like to suggest to you not to talk about the settlements, Livni told Ban. At around that time, Israel was issuing new tenders for construction in the territories, mainly in Jerusalem and the large settlement blocs. Ban wanted to know why. Since your position on this issue is well-known, Livni replied, I would propose that you do not talk about it at this particular time. According to her, any statements to that effect at this juncture would only render the negotiations harder, forcing Palestinian Authority Chairman Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) to say something harsh, which could perhaps then undercut the possibility of progress. Abu Mazen cannot come off as more moderate than the UN. He, too, faces an opposition.

Livni explained to Ban how sensitive the situation was, imploring him not to make the same mistake the Americans had made during US President Barack Obama’s first term. Back then, the administration put Abu Mazen on a high horse from which one cannot dismount peacefully. You can only fall off, and they left him to his own devices. Finally, the negotiations resumed, she told him, and the future of the settlements will have to be determined in the bilateral discussions. That’s why at this point it’s better to be smart than right and leave the talking to us (the recent sentences are my own interpretation.)

Livni adopted the same approach when the discussion touched on the Palestinian prisoners-murderers whom Israel had released just two days earlier. What I would like to suggest to you, she said, is not to issue a statement in support of the release. When the secretary-general wanted to know why, she explained to him that some 85% of the Israeli public was opposed to the release. If you find out what those people were convicted of, you would understand too. No other country in the world would have released such prisoners. This is an open Israeli wound. This move is hard for everyone, myself included, mainly because Israel did not get anything real in return.

In other words, Livni suggested to Ban that he let the Israelis and Palestinians run their own affairs without interfering by making unnecessary statements. When all is said and done, the peace treaties that Israel signed with the Arabs — Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians in Oslo — were always accomplished through direct negotiations between the parties without involvement, interference, pressure or threats. Former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin made such a strategic decision and executed it, and the same is true of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The world can only stand in the way. Whenever the world meddled, wielded pressure or lectured, it all came crashing down.

Then, it was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s turn. That was interesting, too. Netanyahu is a weak prime minister, a failed manager and a controversial leader. However, when it comes to public diplomacy he is unmatched. Having studied Ban, he knew exactly how to strike a chord with him.

Netanyahu presented Ban the ongoing Palestinian incitement against Israel that comes across from the Palestinian curriculum which continues to call for Israel’s obliteration from the face of the earth, while describing Jews as “monkeys and pigs,” etc. Then it was time for [Prime Minister Netanyahu] Bibi to get to the punch line. The prime minister compared the Palestinian campaign of incitement and lies against Israel to North Korea’s unending and unbridled incitement against South Korea. Bibi had a long list of examples which left the secretary-general dumbfounded.

Then, as was to be expected, Bibi proceeded to discuss the Iranian nuclear program. He drew a similar comparison to North Korea, or, to put it more precisely, to North Korea’s nuclear project. Netanyahu masterfully delineated the similarities between Iran’s nuclear program and that of North Korea. The latter didn’t give a hoot about the world or the United States, until South Korea woke up one morning only to find out that its neighbor to the north has a nuclear bomb.

In that case, too, the world believed that diplomacy could postpone or do away with the bad news — a belief which proved to be baseless. When Netanyahu switched over to the Iranian nuclear project, he let Ban understand how dangerous Iran is to world peace — not just to Israel. He explained to the secretary-general how messianic Iran’s leadership is and how it is guided by radical religious edicts. The Iranians must not be allowed to do what the North Koreans did, Netanyahu said. Iran is a huge country with immense oil deposits and high capabilities. Such a country cannot be isolated the way the West has isolated North Korea. A nuclear Iran will exact a heavy price from the world — a price it cannot afford.

The comic relief in the meeting between Ban and Netanyahu took place when the Israeli premier started talking about “construction in the settlements.” Most of the construction takes place in Jerusalem — Israel’s capital. It is carried out in places that everyone understands will remain in Israeli hands even in the settling of a final status arrangement, Netanyahu explained. For example, we build in Gilo, which is a neighborhood in Jerusalem across the Green Line, the premier explained. Then took the UN secretary-general to the window and pointed out the neighborhood. Can you possibly imagine that we won’t be able to build here, a place you can see from the prime minister’s office? Bibi asked.

Fortunately, Ban is not familiar with Jerusalem.

On the one hand, Bibi is right. The Palestinians know all too well that Gilo will remain in Israeli hands even in the settling of a final status arrangement. On the other hand, you cannot see Gilo from the prime minister’s office. What Bibi showed Ban is the Israel Museum, which is not too far from his office. But Ban is from South Korea. As far as he is concerned, the Israel Museum can represent Gilo, can’t it?

Incidentally, Ban did not hear anything substantially different from the leader of the opposition, Knesset member Shelly Yachimovich (chairwoman of the Labor party). When it comes to these issues, there is a consensus in Israel.

Later during his visit, it felt like the UN secretary-general had listened closely to what the Israeli leadership had said to him in that room. His statements sounded relatively mellifluous to Israeli ears.

I would assume that Ban is well-aware of the fact that the only capital in the Middle East where he can move about freely nowadays — without the fear of being targeted by rockets, car bombs, chemical missiles, mass demonstrations or other similar perils — is Jerusalem. He cannot do this in Cairo, Damascus, Beirut, Tripoli or Sanaa. Even Amman is not what it used to be. By way of comparison, Jerusalem and Ramallah are a paradise of leisure, although this is temporary, too. In the Middle East the tables can turn in a matter of a split second.

Since I last described here in Al-Monitor the relative quiet in Jerusalem and Ramallah, Israel was hit by rockets fired at Eilat on Aug. 13 (which were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system) and at the Western Galilee on Aug. 22 (likewise intercepted). On Aug. 19, 25 Egyptian policemen were executed by armed militants in Rafah in the Sinai, a car bomb exploded in Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah’s Dahiyeh quarter in Beirut on Aug. 15 and the Syrian regime killed hundreds, if not thousands of civilians in a chemical attack in east Damascus on Aug. 21.

Whenever we think that the Middle East has hit rock bottom, we hear heavy pounding from below, and then it turns out that hitting rock bottom is still quite a ways away. There’s one truth, however, that’s emerging right before our eyes: The West is losing control over the events. Western deterrence is already nonexistent. The days when everybody would hold their breath waiting for the daily press briefing from the White House are long gone. US President Barack Obama has made a mockery of himself, so much so that nobody really cares about what America thinks, says or does.

This is best illustrated when drawing a comparison between the events in Cairo and Syria. The Americans had long ago set a “red line” for Syria, namely the use of chemical weapons.

However, when a high-ranking Israeli intelligence officer revealed that chemical weapons had been used in Syria, the Americans gagged, got muddled, denied and ultimately confirmed this. Preposterously enough, they announced that “there might have been a possibility” that the Syrian regime had indeed masterminded the recent chemical attack in Damascus. Great. If that’s the case, what will you do? Nothing, it seems.

I’m not calling on the Americans to act in Syria. If I were the US president, I would not intervene in Syria no matter what. Anyone in his right mind has to steer clear from that. Intervention in Syria would pay off and be deemed legitimate only if it were supported by the entire international community. Since this is not going to be the case, there’s no point in goading this or that sheriff to hold the reins in Syria. The world has to come to terms with the new reality: You cannot avert every horror across the globe. Using moral principles, it’s very hard to decide between two similar devils — such as the warring factions in Syria.

It is against this backdrop that the Western conduct in connection with Egypt is becoming more perplexing. My friends, when will it dawn on you that what the Egyptian army is trying to do is to prevent replicating the harrowing reality in Syria? The nonsense of Western democracy and values are unsuitable for societies that still enslave women, minorities and weak castes.

The Americans placed their bet on the Muslim Brotherhood two years ago and now they find it hard to accept that they bet on the wrong horse. The Egyptian public doesn’t want “the brothers” to dictate their life, laws and customs. In Egypt, there are no checks and balances as one would find in a true democracy, at least not for now. So the only way of coping with the events is to determine that having the Egyptian army take control for a transitional period and disperse the riots with force is better than the alternative.

What’s the alternative? That’s simple. The alternative is an armed gang that takes 25 plainclothes men off two minibuses, forces them to lie on the ground and shoots all of them — one by one — to death in broad daylight. This is the face of radical Islam, of which all of us — regardless of religion, sex, color, race or nationality — should be afraid of.
——–

Ben Caspit is a contributing writer for Al-Monitor’s Israel Pulse. He is also a senior columnist and political analyst for Israeli newspapers, and has a daily radio show and regular TV shows on politics and Israel.

The reach of human compassion!
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And from Rabbi Michael Lerner’s Tikkun Magazine:

If you have California Bay Area friends, do tell them that rabbis Arthur Waskow, Phyllis Berman, and Lynn Gottlieb will be co-leading parts of the High Holiday services with me in Berkeley. The spiritual work we do at our service (which is not a performance but a deep inner process that incorporates as well as the key elements of the traditional service) is not just for Jews or for believers in God, but for anyone ready to engage in spiritual transformation.

Please urge them to check it out at www.beyttikkun.org/article.php/HH… [ www.beyttikkun.org/article.php/HH... ].

On Yom Kippur, during the Yizkor service, we will also do some grieving for the victims of the Egyptian coup (but also for those killed by Morsi’s regime), for the Syrians killed in their civil war, and for all the other victims of violence in our world. And we will be mourning for the earth as more of its species and more of its life force continue to get violently assaulted by the globalization of selfishness, materialism, and corporate rapaciousness.

“She will travel home shortly,” the spokeswoman added.

========================

UPDATED: We learn from BBC that the the pardon came from the ruler of Dubai himself and that part of the deal was that he pardoned the rapist as well – that is the RAPIST was PARDONED from having had EXTRAMARITAL SEX – as the language of the Islamic Prosecutor. Really – this makes it even worse.

Mr. Martin Nesirky, the Spokesperson for The UN Secretary-General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, speaking to the UN accredited PRESS, Monday July 15th, ended his daily briefing by saying:

He said that the General Assembly was meeting on international migration and development in October, and that this was an opportunity for member States to lay the foundation for improved local, regional and international migration policies.” That’s what I have. Questions, please? Yes, Pam?

There was not a single question on this topic!

This statement relates to full three days of activities right here at the UN Headquarters in New York and across the street in the Church Center – which followed a full year of preparations outside the UN in a process that was started in 2006 when there was a UN General Assembly mandated first “High-Level” Dialogue on this topic and was succeeded by yearly meetings and further regional meetings.

Now we are at the preparation stage for the October 3-4, 2013 Second United Nations High-Level Dialogue on Migration and Development with next planned meeting already for 2014 in Sweden, the home turf of Ambassador Ian Eliasson, the current Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations. And all of this in the name of figuring out the UN activities in the post-2015 era – as mandated at the 2012 RIO+20 Conference.

At Rio the recommendations included the removal of the non-producing Commission on Sustainable Development and its replacement with a High-Level Panel that will look into the creation of a system of Sustainable Development Goals that will follow in 2015 after the expiring Millennium Development Goals – and this allows for an unusual opportunity to try for making the avoidance of the need of Migration into a Sustainable Development Goal. But the UN seems to oppose this by all the means it has – and I will explain.

You see – when I walk the streets of New York these days I bump into people. This is because the daily temperature reaches 100 degrees Fahrenheit and people do not walk in a straight line. You must try to anticipate which way they will deviate – and I am as guilty as anyone else – this because global warming and Climate Change are already here with us. Relating to our topic here – MIGRATION occurs now not just because people are attracted by magnets of freedom from dictatorships, from religious or sexual oppression, or because of a chance to better education, but now – more and more – there is the push of hunger – climate change has made it impossible to support populations in their country of origin and this migration has become the highest security issue in our days. If heat and Climate Change is impacting New York, just think what this has done in Mali or Darfur!

The UN is not blind to this. The UN Secretary-General was supposed to be the opening speaker at the Monday, July 15, 2013 event at the meeting at the UN General Assembly with Mr. Vuk Jeremik, President of the General Assembly as Chairman of the session. But Mr. Ban Ki-moon chose to be on a July fact finding tour of Europe that took him to see the effects of glaciers melting in Iceland, and a visit in Paris on Bastille Day with the French troops fighting in Mali.

Both above visits, as well as the meetings in-between, would have made a great story had the UN Secretary-General returned to New York and told on Monday July 15th his impressions to the meeting here. But this seemingly did not cross his mind, and surely this is no reflection on the way Mr. Elliason presented the case. It must be said that seven years ago – at the first dialogue – Mr. Eliasson presided because it was his position of President of the UN General Assembly, so he is well versed with the issues – the roles of Civil Society, Labor Unions and Employers’ organizations, diaspora organizations, and academics. He stressed that the challenge is to reach to the help of the media – “Knowing the facts is the source of wisdom” he quoted.

Mr. Eliasson said he wants to see as a post 2015 program a five year action program in five areas of priority:
- the cooperation between States,
- a comprehensive data system of migration facts,
- the integration of the migrants into our societies and economies,
- plan migration with labor markets and development consideration,
- a framework for managing migration from crisis and violence regions.

What he did not mention is the right of people to avoid migration that was pushed upon them because of changes in the local environment.

Mr. Jeremik reminded us of the Rio vision for the post-2015 as an aspiration to strive for equitable approaches to overcome poverty and inequality.

At the meeting on Monday participated over 200 Civil Society organizations and 80 UN member States.
The main organization was in the hands of Switzerland and Swiss based NGOs like Caritas, The International Catholic Migration Commission, The Global Economic Forum, with with Ms. Susan Martin of Georgetown University, Institute for the Study of International Migration that awards you a Certificate on the subject, and Mr. Dennis Sinyolo, Education and Employment Coordinator at Education International, as moderators.

Starting with the strong Swiss presence I must say that as Migration means Emigration from one place and Immigration to another – this except Migration within the same country, Switzerland is a country of poor record as it does not allow citizenship except when the candidate is weighed in gold – and I am not abstract on this – Just think of the Agha Khan and his Swiss based Foundation. So, when A good looking lady presented herself as a migrant from El Salvador to Switzerland, with dual nationality and diamonds sparkling from her earrings, spoke about the Global Economic Forum backing the economic advantages that come from migration – I had to wonder about what I was hearing. Then let us not forget that simple mortals could not stay in Switzerland when their life was in peril. In general – I was more impressed by the people in the room then by some of the presenters, as in UN fashion – the good turns easily into the trite, and good ideas can produce easily flying meetings that are not free to the introduction of ideas born outside the initiating circle. Trying to introduce the notion that the UN is changing and that MDGs are ending with new SDGs taking their place, and the fact that the UN just opened this month the office for Sustainable Energy – the SE4All concept, and that right now there is an opportunity to talk of migration in context of Climate Change – all that was beyond the interest of the organizers and the moderators – but very much of interest of many of the participants.

Civil Society is surely a mixed bag, and the stress on remittances from the Migrants back to their families in the homeland become very important part of the economies of some oppressive governments – so, indiscriminately stressing the economic value may not be any better idea then using military from countries in trouble in order to beef up the troops of UN Peace-Keeping forces in other countries in trouble, when the pay for this service is income for the government that sends these troops. This comment may have nothing to do with the subject at hand but is important to the understanding of the depth of the problem when you work in he UN context.

Without delving further in depth of what was said, this because the meetings were just an interactive exercise that will generate its own papers, the real news this Monday were not the Civil Society NGOs that were allowed to participate – but rather those organizations that were excluded in total lack of transparency and thus gave a blue eye to the UN institution as a whole.

In this case it was with two NGOs with interest in Human Rights of Women – specifically women in Arab lands – even more specific – in Saudi Arabia – they DID SPEAK UP.
Lala Arabian from a Beirut based NGO INSAN, part of the Arab Network for Migrants, which I was told speaks a fluent English, decided to speak out in Arabic against the treatment of Arab women – specifically in Saudi Arabia. Further – A woman in an impeccable English, coming from a United Arab Emirates NGO, but probably living overseas, made a similar statement from the floor. I did not note her name but she came from www.migrant-rights.org/category/g…


The Three NGOs that were absent are:

3.”The Center for International Migration and Integration (CIMI)” advises governments and NGOs around the world on migration and integration.
CIMI has Observer Status wit the International Organization foe Migration (IOM) since 2003 and participates actively in all its meetings.
CIMI also partners with many other national and International organizations including the UNHCR (The UN Refugee Agency) and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
This information was confirmed by Ms. Michele Klein Solomon, the Permanent Observer for IOM at the United Nations. CIMI is also based in Israel.

We post the following because we were present in New York City at the first dinner Rabbi Marc Schneier hosted the Bahraini Ambassador to the UN. That was at the time an extension of Rabbi Schneier’s outreach to Muslims in the US – when he organized joint dinners between Jewish and Muslim communities in various places in the US. Eventually common interests will lead the way to the de-Jure acceptance of Israel as well.

Gulf states ready for peace, says well-connected US rabbi Marc Schneier, who has good ties with Bahraini royal family, urges Netanyahu to take a page out of the Sadat playbook and make the first public overture Rabbi Marc Schneier with King Hamad at the Bahraini Crown Palace, December 2011. (photo Walter Ruby/Foundation for Et hnic Understanding) By Raphael Ahren April 23, 2013 Israel should publicly commend Bahrain for labeling Hezbollah a terrorist organization and it should try to build strategic alliances with all Gulf states based on a common opposition to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a prominent American rabbi with ties to the Bahraini royal family said. Rabbi Marc Schneier, an American congregational leader who recently met with the Bahraini king and the crown prince, urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to visit an Arab country and seize Israel and Sunni Muslims’ common distrust of Tehran as a path toward warming relations with parts of the Arab world. However, an expert on the politics of the gulf states said that while Bahrain’s move to blacklist Hezbollah did present “an opening,” a real improvement of bilateral ties remains elusive and would likely stay under the radar. “We’re so myopic, we’re so focused on Europe, and here you have a very significant development that took place in Bahrain,” Schneier told The Times of Israel, referring to the tiny Gulf state’s recent decision to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization. “I am calling for a conversation to take place, a conversation that needs to begin within Israel about looking east, not only looking west.” Schneier bemoaned the fact that the Bahraini parliament’s March 26 decision to outlaw the Lebanese-Shiite group received little press coverage in Israel, and that Jerusalem didn’t comment at all. “No one’s even discussing this,” he lamented. “After Bahrain passed this legislation, I was simply amazed how little attention this was given in Israel. It is a landmark event, particularly because it’s an Arab country that has called on other Arab countries to follow suit.” “Israel needs to remember it lives in the Middle East and not in the Middle West,” Schneier added. “There is an opportunity to begin to create some kind of strategic alliance with the gulf states, which have been very expressive about their concerns about Iran and its satellite organizations like Hezbollah.” The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem declined to comment on Schneier’s remarks, but a diplomatic official told The Times of Israel that “If the Bahrainis had wanted Israel to say something, they could have sent us a message through diplomatic channels. Since they didn’t, we didn’t.” The Bahraini Foreign Ministry did not respond to a Times of Israel query on this matter. Schneier, perhaps best known for being the founder of The Hampton Synagogue, which is frequented by affluent and prominent US Jews, is the co-founder and president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding. In the framework of his interfaith work, he developed a relationship with Bahrain’s ambassador to the US, Houda Nonoo, the first Jew to represent an Arab country in Washington. In December 2011, Schneier was received by King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa at the royal palace in Manama. The king told him that Bahrain and Israel have a common enemy in Iran. He has been in “close contact with the royal family ever since,” Schneier said. Rabbi Marc Schneier with Crown Prince of Bahrain Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, who is also deputy supreme commander and first deputy prime minister (photo credit: courtesy Foundation for Ethnic Understanding) In March, Schneier returned to Manama to meet with the heir apparent, Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, who is also the deputy supreme commander of the Bahraini army and first deputy prime minister. He “validated and reconfirmed” his father’s statements about Israel and Iran, Schneier said. Israel and Bahrain do not maintain diplomatic relations, but in 2005 King Hamad told the US ambassador that his state has contacts with Israel “at the intelligence/security level (i.e., with Mossad),” according to a secret US diplomatic cable published two years ago by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. He also indicated willingness “to move forward in other areas, although it will be difficult for Bahrain to be the first.” The development of “trade contacts,” though, would have to wait for the implementation of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the king told the ambassador. Other WikiLeaks documents show that senior officials from both countries have spoken in recent years, such as a 2007 meeting between then-foreign minister Tzipi Livni and Bahraini foreign minister Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmed Al Khalifa in New York. The Bahraini foreign minister in 2009 also signaled that he was willing to meet Netanyahu to try to advance the peace process, but ultimately decided not to go ahead with the plan. Frederic Wehrey, a senior associate in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, agreed that the gulf states and Israel have a common foe in Iran. “The designation of Hezbollah is certainly an opening; it shows that they’re concerned about this non-state actor that Israel obviously regards as a dire threat as well,” he said.   However, a real rapprochement between Manama and Jerusalem remains unlikely, asserted Wehrey, who focuses on political reform and security issues in the Arab Gulf states and US policy in the Middle East. “On a strategic level, yes, there is a shared threat, but that doesn’t negate the very issue they’re facing from domestic parties and their populations. Many Bahrainis and citizens of other gulf states feel strongly about the Palestinian cause and the governments will therefore have to tread very carefully in how it approaches relations to Israel,” he said. “If there are ties, they would be under the table and hidden from the public view.” According to the website of the kingdom’s foreign ministry, Bahrain supports the creation of a Palestinian state within the pre-1967 lines and the “right of return of Palestinian refugees.” Manama also holds Jerusalem responsible “for the unfortunate, deteriorating, and painful situation in the Palestinian lands as a result of Israel’s aggressive practices including: assassinations; settlement-building; and the erection of the Separation Wall; as well as attacking holy places, and imposing economic blockades,” the site states. It is not even clear why Israel would want to develop overt ties with Bahrain, added Wehrey, noting that the autocratic regime is currently facing enormous criticism for its poor human rights record and the way it suppresses public unrest. A strong affiliation with such a state – which is not a regional powerhouse like, for instance, Saudi Arabia – “might actually damage Israel’s position,” he said. But Schneier, speaking to The Times of Israel from his home in New York, believes that if Jerusalem made a genuine effort to negotiate a peace treaty with the Palestinians, then Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Oman would be willing to recognize Israel and normalize relations. “All gulf states are ready,” he said. “We now have the opportunity, or the tension, to move that thing along because of Iran.” The rabbi called on Netanyahu to make the first step by approaching the Arab states. “I believe the prime minister should take a page out of Sadat’s playbook and either show up at one of the capitals of the gulf states or appear before the Arab League,” he said, referring to Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s 1977 visit to Israel, which laid the foundation for a peace agreement between the two countries signed two years later.   “There is a precedent for it,” Schneier said. “As long as Israel continues to do its share at trying to arrive at a resolution with the Palestinian people, then I believe there is an opportunity here.”