From the Golan Heights, Through Turkey and Beijing, to Palestine
Golan Heights Massacre
A missile hit in the Syrian Golan Heights that are occupied by Israel (sometimes referred to as the Israeli northern territories) killed twelve Druze Arab children on a football field. Although Trump informally told Israel during his previous administration that he regarded the Golan Heights as Israeli territory, Trump’s judgment has no legal authority whatsoever. So it is very difficult to image that Hezbollah, which both the US and Israel claim to have been responsible, could possibly have imagined that such a strike would be “against Israel.”
The US and Israsel claim that the missile was Iranian, of a kind frequently used by Hezbollah. Hezbollah, which typically assumes responsibility for its strikes, even when they are accidental, has denied responsibility in this case, and its denial has been backed up by the Lebanese government. It is extremely likely that Hezbollah would have targeted Arab civilians; Israel has a far worse record than Hezbollah for targetting or even killing civilians. The missile in question did not leave a crater in the field, but fragments were found, as also in the nearby village. Hezbollah has confessed to targeting an Israeli position some way away. Perhaps this missille was targeted and diverted by Israeli air defense. Or perhaps Israel itself acquired such a missile and used this to stage a false flag incident.
The speed with which Israel and the US have accused Hezbollah aligns with the Netanyahu narrative to Congress last week whose purpose is to blame Iran as (one of) the sponsors for both Hamas and Hezbollah and therefore responsible for the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. It may also be that the US wants to use the Golan Heights incident to reinforce anti-Hezbollah sentiment and thereby increase pressure on Hamas to reach a deal over Gaza before the outbreak of a wider war. But were that really to be the game then it is difficult to see why Netanyahu is doing everything he can to stop Hamas from agreeing a deal by adding ever more conditions Isrsel and backing away from offering any kind of absolute gurantee of a permanent ceasefire.
Alastair Crooke today argues with Judge Napolitano that there is no lasting solution to Gaza because there is no possibility of a two-state solution, given 800,000 settlers in the occupied territories and, I would add, the uncompromising apartheid nature of the regime. Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on June 27 threatened European countries that for “every country that unilaterally recognizes a Palestinian state, we will establish a settlement.”
One way for Israel in a context of a failing IDF in Gaza, an incresasingly powerful Iran, and the continuing threats to Israeli regional supremacy from Hamas and Hezbullah, is to threaten to extend the war by invading Lebanon, provoking war with Iran and forcing the US to become involved on Israel’s side. Orders for such a war have already been given, but it is uncertain whether the initial attacks will be solely on military targets or civilian, and how far such attacks will penetrate Lebanon. There is no real likelihood, says Crooke, that Kamala Harris will make any different to this equation.
Turkish Intervention
Suddenly, back into the picture comes Turkey, which has the largest army in the region but whose role in protesting the genocide in Gaza has been extremely modest and disappointing. Yes, one might argue that Turkey has had all manner of economic challenges, that it has had to respond to the devastating earthquake of early 2023 and that it must somehow balance its continuing membership of NATO against its orientation to the BRICS and its Islamic solidarity with Palestine (both are primarily Sunni).
But then again, Turkey played a very substantial role - deeply malign, in my view - in supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and other extremist Islamic elements in reigniting a sectarian challenge to the Assad regime in 2011; collaborating with the CIA in the routing of weapons from post-Gadaffi Libya, through Turkey, to Syrian jihadists; hosting jihadists on Turkish soil; ruling over remnants of foreign extremist Islamists in Syria’s Idlib (some linked to Al Qaeda and to ISIS) some of whom have now been weaponized by Turkey in other conflicts (Libya; Azerbaijan - see below).
That involvement together with its cooperation with both Damascus and Moscow in the policing of a buffer zone between Syria and Turkey along Syria’s northwestern border, its eternal enmity towards Syrian-based Kurds in northeastern Syria, and its absorption of a million or so Syrian refugees, suggest that Turkey is well able to afford an expansive and intrusive foreign policy if it so decides.
Why not Gaza? On Sunday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a televised address threatened Turkey could “enter” Israel as it did in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh. In 2020, Turkey began deploying military advisors and Syrian mercenaries to Libya to support the UN-backed Government of National Accord. Turkey also strongly backed Azerbaijan’s 2020 assault on Nagorno-Karabakh by providing weapons and political support. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz has commented in response that “Erdogan follows in the footsteps of Saddam Hussein.”
Chinese Mediation
Whereas Turkish involvement would likely be escalatory China is considering a more constructive, peaceful role, as illustrated in the recently-agreed Beijing Declaration. The agreement calls for a national unity government to govern Gaza jointly after the end of the current conflict. Steven Sahiounie today (Sahaoun) reports that Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi hosted a three-day meeting attended by senior Hamas official Musa Abu Marzuk, Fatah envoy Mahmud al-Aloul, along with emissaries from 12 other Palestinian groups and envoys from Egypt, Algeria and Russia.
The purpose was to establish the Palestine Liberation Organization as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people by working to reconcile the long-established feud between Hamas (the major political force in Gaza) and Fatah (the major political force in the West Bank).
China has proved to be the only world power that can engineer a rapprochement between the Palestinian rivals. Wang Yi also called for a “comprehensive, lasting and sustainable ceasefire”, as well as efforts to promote Palestinian self-governance and full recognition of a Palestinian state at the UN. China was also an important mediator in bringing about a rapprochement between Saudia Arabia and Iran in 2023. Sahiounie writes that the Saudi-Iran relationship has been strengthened during the Israeli war on Gaza, as both sides reaffirm their shared support of the Palestinian people, and call for the end of the war and long-term peace.
Sahiounie explaints that Fatah was formed from the PLO, founded by Yasser Arafat:
“In the 1993 Oslo Agreement, the PLO laid down their arms, while Hamas has remained an armed resistance group. The Geneva Convention guarantees the legal right of armed resistance to occupation”.
Hamas has recently indicated a willingness to disarm if a Palestinian state were established. Hamas and Islamic Jihad are not members of the PLO - the Palestinians’ highest decision-making body - but they demand that any unity deal includes holding an election for the PLO parliament to secure their inclusion.
But nothing, of course, is that simple. Ali Abunimah (Abunimah), writing in Popular Resistance, agrees that the new agreement commits all factions to form a “national consensus government,” which would be in charge of running affairs in Gaza after the war. The government would be chosen in consensus by all factions, suggesting that it would therefore comprise technocrats rather than factional representstives. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other factions that emerged during the first and second Intifadas would have to join the PLO.
This in turn highlights the longstanding commitment of the PLO to a negotiations process as a way to establishing a Palestinian state, while cooperating in security and business affairs with Israel. The problem, of course, if we return to the above comments by Alastair Crooke, is that the notion of a two-state solution seems utterly impractical, while the notion of a single, non-apartheid Israel flies directly in the face of the Zionist ideology that prevails. Further, there are factions that do not agree with the PLO’s commitment and were these to join the PLO then its unity would be in name only.
Nonetheless, Abunimah sees the possibility of a functional unity following the Gaza war - a context in which one might consider it the interest of all Palestinian factions to establish a new order. Abunimah notes that the conflict between the Palestinian Authority, and its Fatah leadership, and Hamas in 2007 - a conflict, I would add, that was encouraged by Netanyahu, who even supported Hamas at that time - was responsible for the administrative division between the West Bank and Gaza.
But for a new generation of Palestinians this division is ancient history. Palestinian youth manifested their own version of national unity on the street, especially following the cancellation by the Palestinian president of elections in 2021 and the subsequent uprisings in protest.
Political divisions between Palestinian leaders do not reflect divisions in the Palestinian society therefore, but only the different compromises that different leaders have made to ensure their own continuance in the political game. The Palestinian Authority staked its political and historical capital in a Western-led negotiation process, with the hope of reaching Palestinian statehood.
“As a consequence, the PA became dependent on the approval of the U.S. and European donors, as well as on the Israeli-controlled customs money used by Israel repeatedly as a political weapon. These dynamics leave the PA no choice but a political program based on security and economic cooperation with Israel. A program that contradicts the popular will to such an extent that it needs to rely on growing authoritarianism to impose itself.”
Hamas, by contrast, stood for resistance to occupation by all means. October 7th was in essence a political statement by Hamas to the effect that it was ready to lead the Palestinians. This was necesssary in part because Palestinian political elections had been canceled a month earlier, depriving Hamas of a strictly political venue to challenge the PA. Yet in reality, Abunimah argues, Hamas being led by a new force “that Palestinians expressed through their non-partisan, trans-geographical unity across historic Palestine, with mass mobilizations.” This underlined the contemporary reality that the old PA-Hamas division is obsolete.
The US may want the PA to play a role in post-war Gaza but this will be impossible without a formal reconciliation involving all Palestinian factions. Hamas is now the most relevant force in Palestinian politics but in a post-war context it can only exercise influence as part of a unified Palestinian leadership.
“The consequences of previous political failures have accumulated to the point where the Palestinian people are now facing the breaking point of an Israeli war on all Palestinians, which aims to end the hopes for a Palestinian state, the mass expulsion of millions of Palestinians, and the final annexation of the West Bank. The consequences of failure now cannot be overstated”.