Netanyahu mulls revoking benefits for some Palestinians in East Jerusalem

By Jeffrey Heller

Benjamin Netanyahu (R) attends the weekly cabinet meeting in his office in Jerusalem (October 25, 2015)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has raised the possibility of revoking benefits and travel rights of some Palestinians living in East Jerusalem, a government official said on Monday, in response to a wave of Palestinian violence.

Such a move did not appear to be imminent or even politically feasible but its mere mention ran counter to a decades-old Israeli assertion that Jerusalem is a united city where Arab and Jewish residents enjoy equal rights.

Israel regards all the city, including East Jerusalem, which was captured along with the West Bank in 1967, as its indivisible capital. Unlike their brethren in the occupied West Bank, Palestinians in East Jerusalem receive Israeli social benefits and can move freely in Israel.

Many of the Arab assailants in one of the worst waves of Palestinian-Israeli street violence in decades have come from East Jerusalem.

Many of the Palestinian attacks on Israelis are now occurring in the West Bank, rather than in Jerusalem where they started. Israeli forces on Monday shot dead a Palestinian assailant who the army said had stabbed and wounded a soldier at an intersection near the town of Hebron.

Since Oct. 1, at least 54 Palestinians, half of whom Israel says were assailants, have been shot and killed by Israelis at the scene of attacks or during protests in the West Bank and Gaza. Israeli police say 10 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian stabbings or shootings.

Citing comments at a security cabinet meeting held two weeks ago, the government official said Netanyahu mentioned the possibility of revoking some rights for Palestinians who live within Jerusalem's municipal borders but outside the barrier Israel built during a Palestinian suicide bombing campaign a decade ago.

Rights groups estimate that around 100,000, or almost a third of Jerusalem's Palestinians, live beyond the barrier.

The official, however, said there was no discussion of the matter at the forum and Netanyahu did not ask that it be included on the agenda of a future meeting. Netanyahu's remarks were first reported by Channel Two television late on Sunday.

LAWLESSNESS

At the security cabinet meeting, Netanyahu complained of lawlessness in Palestinian neighborhoods in those outlying areas, where sporadic Israeli raids to arrest suspected militants are usually met with violent protests.

After the 1967 Middle East war, Israel expanded Jerusalem's municipal borders by annexing parts of the West Bank to the city. Jerusalem Palestinians are not Israeli citizens, but they hold Israeli-issued blue IDs that grant them permanent resident status.

"We have to think about what to do. There are all sorts of possibilities. But it is impossible to give them all of the rights without having them fulfill all of their responsibilities," Channel Two quoted Netanyahu as saying.

Rights groups and Palestinians in East Jerusalem have long complained of a paucity of municipal services, difficulties in receiving building permits and Israeli moves to revoke the residency of those who leave the city for extended periods.

Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem and its claim to all of the city as its capital are not recognized internationally. Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of the state they seek to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

From:
Heller, Jeffrey. "Netanyahu Mulls Revoking Benefits for Some Palestinians in East Jerusalem." Reuters.com. Thomson Reuters, 26 Oct. 2015. Web. 26 Oct. 2015.

Response
Given Israel's historical mistreatment of its Arab minority (even going so far as to place them under military government in the 1960s) any mention of somehow revoking the rights of Palestinian residents in East Jerusalem is likely to be met with hostility from nearly all sides of the conflict.

The article seems to take advantage of that sensitivity, perhaps making more of Netanyahu's remarks than what is appropriate (I found the title to be slightly misleading). This, in addition to the vague statements about the difficulties facing Palestinians in Jerusalem, serves to portray the situation of the Arabs in a more favourable light.

Further reference to select statistics and the mention of the attacks shifting to the West Bank also raise questions as to how effective Netanyahu's unlikely course of action is likely to be.

Personally, I sympathise with the Arabs in Jerusalem and believe that barring them from certain rights for the actions of a few extremists is unjust. Jewish presence in the Middle East has always been characterised by aggressive expansion and to me, Netanyahu's latest remarks come across as an impossible scheme to use the latest surge of public resentment against the Arab community to further cement the Israeli claim to Jerusalem.

Syrian rebels say they receive more weapons for Aleppo battle

By Tom Perry and Suleiman al-Khalidi

Men play chess in front of a damaged building in the rebel-controlled area of Maaret al-Naaman

Rebels battling the Syrian army and its allies near Aleppo said on Monday they had received new supplies of U.S.-made anti-tank missiles from states opposed to President Bashar al-Assad since the start of a major government offensive last week.

The rebels from three groups contacted by Reuters said new supplies had arrived in response to the attack by the army, which is backed up by Russian air strikes and on the ground by Iranian fighters and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

The delivery of the U.S.-made TOW missiles to rebels in Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria appears to be an initial response to the new Russian-Iranian intervention. Foreign states supporting the rebels include Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar.

But officials from one of the Aleppo-based rebel groups said the supplies were inadequate for the scale of the assault, one of several ground offensives underway with Russian air support.

"A few (TOW missiles) will not do the trick. They need dozens," said one official, declining to be named due to the political sensitivity of the military support program.

A number of rebel groups vetted by states opposed to Assad have been supplied with weapons via Turkey, part of a program supported by the United States and which has in some cases included military training by the Central Intelligence Agency.

These groups fight under the banner of the "Free Syrian Army" - a loose affiliation of rebels that do not operate with a centralized command structure and have been widely eclipsed by jihadist groups such as the Nusra Front and Islamic State.

"We received more supplies of ammunition in greater quantities than before, including mortar bombs, rocket launchers and anti-tank (missiles)," said Issa al-Turkmani, a commander in the FSA-affiliated Sultan Murad group fighting in the Aleppo area. "We have received more new TOWs in the last few days ... We are well-stocked after these deliveries."

TOW missiles are the most potent weapon in the rebels' arsenal. FSA-affiliated groups have also been using TOWs against government forces to fend off another offensive in Hama province, southwest of Aleppo.

Rebels there said last week they had plentiful supplies of the missiles.

Since the start of the Russian air strikes, ground offensives by the Syrian army and its allies have mostly hit areas controlled by insurgent groups other than Islamic State in parts of western Syria that are crucial to Assad's survival.

"LAST THREE DAYS WERE BAD"

The Aleppo offensive is targeting areas a few kilometres (miles) to the south of the city near the highway to Damascus. The army and its allies have captured several villages.

Syrian state TV said the army had captured the town of al-Sabeqiya south of Aleppo on Monday and said the rebels had suffered heavy casualties.

A spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the fighting had displaced 35,000 people from Hader and Zerbeh on the southwestern outskirts of the city in the past few days.

Rami Abdulrahman, head of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which reports on the war using sources on the ground, said at least 41 rebel fighters had been killed.

One Aleppo-based rebel group, the Nour al Din al Zinki Brigades, said its military commander was among the dead. His group is one of the recipients of military aid channeled via an operations room in Turkey and is also supplied with TOW missiles.

"The battles are underway in a big way on a number of fronts. The last three days were bad. Yesterday (the rebel) forces were able to form an operations room and to distribute zones of operation," Hassan al-Haj Ali, head of the rebel Suqour al-Jabal group, told Reuters via the internet.

Government troops and their allies are also trying to advance to the east of Aleppo towards Kweires military airport to break a siege of the base by Islamic State, which controls some parts of Aleppo province, notably to the north of the city.

Abdulrahman said rebels had hit at least 11 army vehicles with TOW missiles near Aleppo since Friday.

One FSA brigade, the Sham Revolutionary Brigades, posted six videos on Saturday showing its fighters targeting army vehicles with wire-guided missiles near Azzan. Videos posted by Sultan Murad showed its men targeting a tank and a bulldozer with TOW missiles near Abtin, captured by the army on Friday.

"There are TOWs in the southern Aleppo front but not enough," said a second rebel official who declined to be named. "Yesterday the regime's armored vehicles were moving freely. We had a shortfall in TOW and the regime APCs were able to move."

The Observatory reported fresh Russian air strikes on Monday in the southern Aleppo area. Abdulrahman described the fighting as heavy but added that the government side had not made further strategic gains on Monday.

The Syrian state news agency said on Monday the rural Aleppo area was one of 49 sites targeted by Russian warplanes, along with rural Damascus, Latakia and Hama.

From:
Perry, Tom, and Suleiman Al-Khalidi. "Syrian Rebels Say They Receive More Weapons for Aleppo Battle." Reuters.com. Thomson Reuters, 19 Oct. 2015. Web. 19 Oct. 2015.

Response

The article is remarkable in the sense that while reporting the details of how the United States is arming Syrian rebels, it refuses to give way to the rampant speculation regarding the development of the Syrian conflict into a proxy war waged with the Russian Federation.

It does, however, seem to criticise the extent of American intervention in Syria, as well as the longterm strategy in aiding the insurgency. Halfhearted efforts to supply a disorganised and oft conflicting coalition of rebel groups pale in comparison to the coordinated Russian strikes that have proven central to the government’s successful counteroffensive on Aleppo.

In the end, the al-Assad government remains more firmly established than it has been in the past two years, employing both Iranian and Russian forces in its campaigns and no less discouraged in propagating the war. This can be traced back to what I believe is the primary flaw in US policy in the Middle East—its inability to effectively address militant Islamic groups.

By perpetuating an unsuccessful air offensive against ISIL, the United States has allowed Russia to gain a legitimate foothold in the Middle East, one that Putin is blatantly exploiting to establish a presence in Syria.

The American public may be tired of war, but if the United States cannot regain its credibility with its allies and consolidate the so-called “Free Syrian Army” into a unified fighting force capable of competing with extremist Islamic groups, no amount of TOW missiles will be able to save its political interests in the Middle East.

Medical charity MSF demands independent probe into strike on Afghan hospital

By Mirwais Harooni and Andrew Macaskill

The MSF hospital following the airstrike, where Afghan soldiers stand guard.

Medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) on Sunday demanded an independent international inquiry into a suspected U.S. air strike that killed 22 people in an Afghan hospital it runs, branding the attack a "war crime".

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter promised a full investigation into whether the American military was connected to the destruction of the hospital, but cautioned it would take time to gather information.

"We do know that American air assets ... were engaged in the Kunduz vicinity, and we do know that the structures that - you see in the news - were destroyed," Carter told reporters traveling with him shortly before landing in Spain on Sunday. "I just can't tell you what the connection is at this time."

The Pentagon chief would not speculate on what occurred but said Washington would hold accountable "anybody responsible for doing something they shouldn't have done."

MSF said a U.S. military probe into the incident, which occurred during a push by Afghan security forces to retake the key northern city of Kunduz from Taliban insurgents, was not enough.

"Relying only on an internal investigation by a party to the conflict would be wholly insufficient," MSF General Director Christopher Stokes said in a statement.

"Under the clear presumption that a war crime has been committed, MSF demands that a full and transparent investigation into the event be conducted by an independent international body," Stokes said.

Battles were still raging on Sunday around Kunduz, a city of 300,000, as government forces backed by U.S. air power sought to drive out the Taliban militants who seized the city almost a week ago in one of their biggest victories in the 14-year war.

Decomposing bodies littered the streets and trapped residents said food was becoming scarce.

"This city is no longer fit for living," said the province's public health director, Sayed Mukhtar.

Any confirmation of U.S. responsibility for the hospital deaths would deal a blow to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's policy of forging closer ties with the United States. His predecessor, Hamid Karzai, fell out with his backers in Washington in part over the number of civilians killed by U.S. strikes.

But the Afghan leader will be torn between distancing himself from Washington and the need for American firepower to help his forces drive insurgents out of Kunduz.

The U.S. military said it conducted an air strike "in the vicinity" of the MSF hospital as it targeted Taliban insurgents who were directly firing on U.S. military personnel. It has not acknowledged hitting the hospital.

U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a U.S. military AC-130 gunship had been operating in the area, firing at Taliban targets after receiving a request for support from U.S. special operations forces advising Afghan troops.

President Barack Obama offered condolences on Saturday to the victims of what he called "the tragic incident". The U.N. human rights chief called the hospital assault "inexcusable" and also said it could amount to a war crime.

The U.S.-led coalition force in Afghanistan said it expected to complete its preliminary multinational investigation within days.

In Kabul, the Ministry of Defence said Taliban fighters had attacked the hospital and were using the building "as a human shield".

But MSF denied that, saying it was "disgusted by the recent statements coming from some Afghanistan government authorities justifying the attack" on its hospital in Kunduz.

"These statements imply that Afghan and U.S. forces working together decided to raze to the ground a fully functioning hospital – with more than 180 staff and patients inside – because they claim that members of the Taliban were present. This amounts to an admission of a war crime," Stokes said in a later statement.

In the air strike, witnesses said patients were burned alive in the crowded hospital. Among the dead were three children being treated.

MSF said on Sunday it had pulled most of its staff out of the area because the hospital that was a lifeline for thousands in the city was no longer functioning. Some staff had gone to help treat the wounded at other hospitals outside of Kunduz.Earlier this year, an Afghan special forces raid in search of a suspected al Qaeda operative prompted the hospital to temporarily close to new patients after the soldiers were accused of behaving violently towards staff. The struggle to retake Kunduz has raised questions over whether NATO-trained Afghan forces are ready to go it alone now that most foreign combat troops have left. Afghan security forces conducted house-to-house searches in Kunduz on Sunday as gunbattles persisted in parts of the city, said Hamdullah Danishi, acting governor of Kunduz province. He said 480 Taliban fighters and 35 soldiers had been killed. The army raised the national flag in the central square, an area of the city that has changed hands several times in the fighting during the past week.

From:

Harooni, Mirwais, and Andrew Macaskill. "Medical Charity MSF Demands Independent Probe into Strike on Afghan Hospital." Reuters.com. Thomson Reuters, 5 Oct. 2015. Web. 5 Oct. 2015.

Response

Faithful to Reuter’s infamous policy of objective journalism, the article above manages to state only the currently known facts concerning the airstrike on the Médecins Sans Frontìeres in Afghanistan. The authors, covering what may become a major criticism of the US airstrike campaign in the Middle East, refrain from conjecture and only cautiously discuss the potential repercussions that may result if American forces were indeed involved in the bombing.

However, the way in which the article is framed and the information that has been selected for presentation do reveal subtle biases that the authors may possess. Statements from Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and the Pentagon ring hollow when placed alongside the facts regarding American military activity in the region leading up to the strike. Furthermore, mention of the terrible living conditions in Kunduz do help portray the MSF organisation in a favourable light as much-needed aid workers in a dangerous region, while reference to an earlier instance of heavy-handedness from Afghan security forces does suggest that they have been operating beyond their jurisdiction.

Of course, my own biases may be coming into play.

Ever since I learned of the United States’ refusal to sign the Rome Statue, I have been critical of its unwillingness to establish international accountability for its military forces, and this new attempt to keep the investigation in-house is characteristic of its historical policy of protecting its operators abroad from prosecution. 

Like the authors of the article, I still remain hesitant to come to a conclusion without seeing definitive evidence and for the most part agree with their description of events. However, I think at this point the question is not whether US forces were indeed involved in the strike, but rather how the international community should move to counter the American government’s efforts to shield its troops from further scrutiny—someone will eventually have to start asking the hard questions.