Weekend long read

Our weekly round-up of Middle East related reading.

1) Jonathan Spyer takes a look at emerging developments in the Middle East.

“In looking to locate the pattern of events, one becomes immediately aware that the activities of only one player add up to a unified whole. That player is Iran. In backing the Shia militias as political and military forces, opposing Kurdish aspirations to independence, seeking by all possible means to establish forces along the border with Israel, and seeking to draw Turkey away from the west and toward itself, Teheran is pursuing a coherent, comprehensive policy and strategy. This strategy ignores any distinction between Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, treating all three as a single arena of conflict. Allies and assets are all utilized to build the project of maximizing Iranian geographic reach and political and military potency within this space.”

2) Khaled Abu Toameh reports on a story which – predictably – has not received any BBC coverage to date.

“The Palestinian Authority (PA) is facing sharp criticism over its attempt to “encroach” on the judicial authority and turn it into a tool in the hands of President Mahmoud Abbas.

Palestinian lawyers, judges and legal experts say that a new bill proposed by the PA government in the West Bank would have a negative impact on the independence and integrity of the judiciary system.

The controversial draft bill aims at amending the law of the judicial authority so that Abbas and his government would be able to tighten their grip over the work of the courts and judges. […]

Palestinian judges and lawyers say they are going to put up a fight against Abbas’s latest bid to turn the judicial system into his personal instrument of reprisal. They have already begun a series of public protests to demand that the PA government abandon its plan to amend the law of the judicial authority in a way that allows the executive body to interfere with the work of the judges and courts.”

3) The Fathom journal has an interview with Yossi Kupperwasser in which he gives his view of the prospects for the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

“If there was a change in the Palestinian narrative, for example if the Palestinians – now under pressure on the issue of the salaries to terrorists – cancelled the law of 2004 according to which salaries are paid to terrorists, and stopped calling terrorists the fighting sector of their society, Israelis would see this as a wonderful move and be more forthcoming on the issue of peace.

The Palestinian narrative says there is no such thing as a Jewish people, and because of this, Palestinians argue that Jews should not be allowed a state of their own under the principle of national self-determination. If the narrative was changed, and Palestinians recognised that there is a Jewish people, so they must be allowed a state of their own under the principle of national self-determination, with full civil rights for minorities, then many Israelis would change their mind about the viability of the peace process and the Palestinian partner for peace.”

4) David Collier has posted some fascinating documents from the British Archives that he found while researching a project.

“It has meant spending time, inside the files that recorded the British view of the events of the Mandate. Engaging with the mindset of those that wrote the documents. This ‘perspective’, and the bias behind the written conclusions, are often missed by researchers. The British records highlight the growing adversarial nature between the British and the Zionists as the Mandate evolved.”

 

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