Today’s Top Stories
1. The Palestinian Authority has officially joined the International Criminal Court as of April 1 opening the possibility that Israeli politicians and military leaders could face war crimes charges in the future.
The Daily Telegraph asks what this could mean for Israel and the PA:
The Palestinians intend to formally lodge two cases with the court on or after April 1, 2015. One case will deal with Israel’s settlement construction, which is illegal under international law. The second case will investigate Israel’s conduct in the recent Gaza conflict.
In addition, the Palestinians have already lodged an ad hoc investigation with the court, also on the 2014 Gaza conflict. The decision whether or not to take up the full investigation rests with the ICC prosecutor General Fatou Bensouda, but she is obliged to at least open a preliminary examination, which was done in January 2015.
Israel, like the US, is not a state party to the ICC’s Rome Statute, but its citizens could be tried on accusations of crimes on Palestinian land.
Meanwhile a Palestinian official has denied Israeli media claims that the Palestinian Authority (PA) signed a secret deal with the government of PM Benjamin Netanyahu to grant the release of taxes.
2. PM Netanyahu continued on Wednesday to rail against the Iranian nuclear deal being negotiated in Lausanne, saying it was outrageous that the world negotiates with Tehran as one of its military leaders says Israel’s destruction is “non-negotiable.” This in reference to the commander of the Basij militia of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards who said that “erasing Israel off the map” is “nonnegotiable,” according to an Israel Radio report Tuesday.
3. Amid claims that it committed war crimes in the last Gaza conflict, Hamas’ political leader Khaled Meshaal has condemned what he referred to as “Israeli extremism,” telling the BBC in an interview aired Wednesday that the Palestinian attacks against Israel would continue “as long as there is occupation, aggression, war and killing.”
“We’re not looking for any escalation, but we will defend ourselves,” Meshaal told BBC Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen in an interview from his headquarters in Qatar, adding that Hamas will be “careful to respect international humanitarian law and to target only military targets.”
4. We think that Jeremy Bowen gave Meshaal a free platform to make some laughable statements that went virtually unchallenged. Watch the interview and see HonestReporting’s reaction: BBC Interview Treats Hamas Leader With Kid Gloves.
Israel and the Palestinians
• The Palestinian Football Association will ask the FIFA Congress in May to suspend Israel, accusing it of continuing to hamper its football activities.
Commentary/Analysis
• Dennis Ross says Iran will remain a threat with or without a nuclear agreement with the West. At best, he argues, the deal with give the West a year’s notice if Iran is pushing towards a nuclear arms program.
At some point, the Obama administration changed its objective from one of transforming the Iranian nuclear program to one of ensuring that Iran could not have a breakout time of less than one year. The former was guided by our determination to press Iran to change its intent about pursuing or at least preserving the option of having a nuclear weapon. The latter clearly reflects a very different judgment: that we were not able to alter the Iranian intentions, so instead we needed to focus on constraining their capabilities.
By definition, when we speak about a one-year breakout time, we are accepting that Iran will have the means and infrastructure to produce nuclear weapons and we are trying to develop impediments to its doing so—even as we also create indicators that alert us to any such Iranian effort.
• And if you think that’s setting the bar pretty low, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius has begun to refer to the process itself as “nearly as important” as the result.
First, there is the fact of U.S.-Iranian engagement. For more than 18?months, Iran has been in direct talks with a power it once demonized as the “Great Satan.” Iranian hard-liners certainly remain, but the nation that chanted in unison “Death to America” is probably gone forever.
This process of engagement is a significant achievement of the Obama administration, even if the nuclear accord unravels. Iran is now a diplomatic and political factor in regional and world politics, for better or worse. The right U.S. strategy was to prevent this rising Iran from getting nuclear weapons, not to pretend that it didn’t exist.
• Former Ambassador to the U.S. and new Member of Knesset, Michael Oren, warns that Israel could lose trust in the U.S. if a bad deal is signed.
“There will be a greater tendency to address challenges in the region within the region, rather than calling on the U.S.,” he said. “It is a sea change. It will compel us to revisit some of our long-held assumptions and think seriously about how to defend ourselves in the future.”
• Roger Boyes in The Times of London (pay wall) says that as Tehran stirs up trouble across the Middle East, it’s time to support Saudi-led efforts to tackle Iranian expansionism.
Much hinges on Iranian intentions. The US and its allies have chosen to believe in a modernising Iran that has more to lose than gain from regional unrest and bloodshed. The Saudis cannot see the evidence for this. Rather, they judge Iran by its current attempts to subvert its neighbours, by behaviour patterns set by centuries of rivalry and by the balance of forces within the clerical regime that indicate a resurgence of the hardliners. I’m with the sceptics, indeed with anyone who makes policy on the basis of close and sober observation. We should have learned by now that the Middle East and Dreamworld are separate places. It is natural to have reservations about Saudi Arabia, but this Sunni coalition deserves our political support.
• Mahdieh Javid and Firuzeh Mahmoudi argue that the Iranian nuclear talks shouldn’t overshadow any focus on Iran’s human rights abuses.
With progress being made in the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, it’s time for a new conversation about Iran – one about the country’s dismal human rights record. The international community’s diplomatic efforts should be deployed to improve the basic tenets of democracy – freedom of speech, freedom of press, right to information, equality of citizens, and free and fair elections. …
Iran’s hardliners remain fearful of a diplomatic rapprochement. The impact of any shift in emphasis from the nuclear conversation is not lost on Iran’s hardliners. As Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said on his official website: “If we didn’t have a nuclear program [the Americans] would look for another excuse, like human rights concerns … therefore, it’s best for us to continue with our progress with all force and refuse to respond to bullying”.
• Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor gets space in the New York Times to demonstrate the utter failure of the UN as an institution.
I am often asked how I can stand the tide of hatred aimed at Israel. Our response to the United Nations’ accusations is to speak tirelessly for those who are denied a voice in most of the Middle East — women, minorities, the L.G.B.T. community — and to fight daily efforts by totalitarian regimes to undermine democratic societies. Based on the fact that Israel is a thriving society, I believe we are winning.
• Quartz Magazine lists the four strategic challenges facing the next Israeli government, including the slide towards partisan support in the U.S, Iran’s nuclear ambition, the Palestinian shift away from cooperation towards diplomatic confrontation, and the trend towards delegitimization in Europe and the U.S.
Hussein Ibish says that the split in Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood party might herald a new direction for Islamic parties across the Arab world:
Arab societies have Islamist constituencies, and therefore will have Islamist parties and organizations. Ultimately, even those states most opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood must think about how to accommodate those supporters.
Much now depends on the outcome of the Jordanian Brotherhood’s split. It seems almost certain that one faction will come out on top and the party will reunify. If the moderates prevail, this could provide a new model — alongside Ennahda — for other Arab societies seeking to integrate Islamist constituencies into stable political systems.
• Elliott Abrams asks why the different reactions to Yemen and Gaza.
So, taking fire from a civilian area in which shooters were hiding, the Saudis struck back. When Israel does that in Gaza, where it is the common practice of Hamas to hide in and shoot from civilian areas, and to store weapons in schools and hospitals (including those run by the United Nations), what happens? Israel is universally condemned. UN investigation commissions are appointed, and reports such as the egregious “Goldstone Report” (officially, the “The United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict”) are issued. The UN Security Council holds special sessions, and the UN Human Rights Council adds additional “hate Israel” meetings to its usual list.
I cannot recall an incident where Israel struck at a refugee camp and killed 40 people all at once, also injuring 200 others, but I am willing to bet on the world reaction to this Saudi attack: zero. No meetings, commissions, no reports.
Rest of the Roundup
• The appointment of Trevor Noah as Jon Stewart’s successor on The Daily Show has caused a backlash over the South African comedian’s views on Israel and other offensive tweets. Israellycool takes a look.
Featured image: CC BY Keijo Knutas via flickr with additions by HonestReporting
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