Sunday, October 08, 2023

The Israel-Gaza war is partly an outcome of years-long western distraction

A shift in focus towards Iran led US and European powers to take their eyes off the Middle East Peace Process

People at the site of a destroyed mosque following an Israeli air strike in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, on Sunday. Bloomberg

What the world needs now is George Bush Sr as US president. Instead, it’s got Joe Biden.

That is because so much complacency had set in over the situation of the Palestinians ahead of the breakout from the Gaza siege at the highest levels of diplomacy.

It is not because Mr Biden owns the horrific events that are now rapidly escalating from one Israeli frontier to another. In fact, it is a comment on America’s lack of ownership more broadly.

And to be fair to Mr Biden, that lack of American grip on the diplomacy and security agenda in the region long predates his rise to the Oval Office.

What the late Mr Bush did during his time in office in the 1980s and 90s was to show the world that American leadership can be dedicated to a single insight – that, without a fierce focus on how to resolve the Palestinian demand for their rights in concert with Israeli leadership, there can only be dangers and threats in the region.

The Madrid Peace Conference of 1991, during which Mr Bush brought his confrontation with then Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir into the open, remains a historic pole for the Middle East Peace Process about a quarter of a century later.

It is the context that proves most useful in looking at why the world’s diplomats scrambled on Saturday morning to come up with lines of reaction to the Hamas assault out of Gaza.

The very fact that it was such a shock was an indictment of global leadership on this top-tier challenge to international diplomacy.

It is not feasible to disentangle a decade of Iran policy from the crisis now engulfing the Middle East Peace Process

Washington’s obsession with finding a placatory deal with Iran should be dead in the water. It is not feasible to disentangle a decade of Iran policy from the crisis that is now engulfing the Middle East Peace Process.

Just a few weeks ago, the Biden administration cleared the way for the release of frozen funds sequestered in South Korea to Iran. The talks were the outcome of the Biden team’s focus on Tehran from the very outset of its takeover from the previous Trump administration.

The bartered arrangement came despite some very peculiar developments in the US State Department’s leadership team dealing with Iran.

Robert Malley, the Iran point man for Mr Biden, was suspended from his job earlier this year amid a probe into his security clearance. Mr Malley comes from a stream of US diplomacy that has a big-picture view of Iran that ascribes little importance to Tehran’s revolutionary zeal.

To be fair to Washington, it is not just US diplomacy that is captured by the foundational concept. The Europeans are equally determined to subscribe to this worldview.

During the Conservative party conference in the UK last week, I sat in on a sidelines discussion on Syria that included a mention of Iran’s systemic exploitation of the civil war. When it was mentioned that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ presence in Syria now amounts to a platform to threaten Israel, there was scarcely a murmur of concern.

All this is an enabling background for the decisions that Hamas has now taken. The shock of the attacks is seismic in itself. The scale of retaliation is now taking on a dynamic of its own. The cards that Hamas still has to play will further push the conflict into more deadly phases. All the while, the lack of leadership from the Palestinian Authority means Hamas grows in strength.

Delegates attend the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference.

Getty Images

While covering one of the Gaza conflicts about a decade ago, I stood by some Iron Dome anti-rocket installations as the system went into action. It was possible to see the technology as a window through which Israel had a firm hand on the threat posed by Hamas, without any realistic consideration of what this means to the more than two million Palestinians under siege. Gaza was literally contained as an issue, not just for Israeli government but for the global diplomacy on the region.

After that, I went to listen to a speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He was out of power at the time, but he had a clear idea of containment that included control of the Palestinian border but also its electronic space. A kind of land-and-air bubble could be imposed that would not pose a problem for Israel, despite the suffering of Palestinians and lack of long-term security for Israelis.

The question that will become apparent in the days ahead is how the world can effectively respond to contain the cycle of violence. The rules that had much of the energy that in George Bush Sr’s time was devoted to resolving the Palestine-Israel issue diverted to Iran are now horribly exposed.

European diplomats are in crisis mode, stressing Israel’s right to defend itself. Their American counterparts are in the same place. It may be a moment of unity that matches the gravity of events.

What cannot be denied is that neglect is no longer an answer to this situation. Whether this episode spirals quickly or not, it needs to be treated as such.

Published: October 08, 2023

GREEN CAPITALI$M

Solar panels and wind turbines show greater growth than the Model T

Green energy's spread is dramatic even compared to the biggest past disruptive technologies

BLOOMBERG

Oct 7th 2023 a

Last month the International Energy Agency published its second Net Zero Roadmap report, which describes a way for the global economy to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. The first edition of the report, in 2021, was a departure for an organization known more for its detailed data than its normative view of the future. This year’s roadmap finds no immediate progress on emissions, but it does offer a “brighter note.” As the authors state in their introduction, “The path to 1.5 degrees C has narrowed, but clean energy growth is keeping it open.”

Behind that growth, or perhaps within it, is the expansion of what the IEA calls “mass manufactured technologies”: solar photovoltaics, electric cars, residential heat pumps and stationary battery storage. These products benefit from “standardization and short lead times,” which means they can be produced by the millions or hundreds of millions, and manufacturers can roll out new and improved versions at a rapid clip.

For instance, between 2015 (when the Paris Agreement was signed) and 2022, solar PV added as much capacity as all of Europe’s installed power generation, and heat pump sales increased to a level “approximately equivalent to the entire residential heating capacity in Russia.”

These milestones are impressive, but even for those steeped in energy data, they are also a bit airless, without reference to something outside energy itself. We know that mass-manufactured clean energy technologies are growing fast – but how does that compare to other sectors and other periods of time?

This year, the IEA provides some useful analogies, setting EV batteries, solar modules and wind turbines against three innovative technologies of the past: US aircraft produced during the Second World War, the Ford Model T from 1910 to 1920 and gas turbine generators from 1970 to 1980.

The report compares these groups based on two factors: the average annual increase in deployment for each technology during its key decade, and how much annual costs declined during that same decade. The result is complex, but in an instructive way.

EV batteries, for example, compare favorably to the fastest-growing historical analogue, US aircraft during WWII. Solar modules grew more rapidly from 2010 to 2020 than gas turbines did during the 1970s, but less rapidly than Model T sales expanded a century prior. Onshore wind grew at about the same pace as gas turbines, and offshore wind grew slightly faster.

In terms of cost reduction, though, batteries and solar are clear winners over their historical counterparts. Battery cost reductions in the prior decade were almost 20% per year on average, and solar cost reductions were not far behind. US aircraft costs fell almost 15% a year, slower than solar or batteries, while Model T costs declined by about 10% every year from 1910 to 1920. Wind technologies, again, compare similarly to the old gas turbine market.

The comparison should energize, so to speak, those hoping for a much greater deployment of these mass manufactured technologies. They are already on the path of innovations that substantially changed the way that people moved (and fought) 80 to 100 years ago.

It also poses a challenge to the drive for net zero greenhouse gas emissions — and a warning.

The challenge is continuing to innovate while pushing solar and battery cost reduction and even higher levels of annual deployment. Here, the IEA’s data cutoff actually works in favor of batteries and solar, which from 2020 through this year will have average annual growth rates of 72% and 39%, respectively, according to BloombergNEF’s market outlooks. Wind, however, is anemic by comparison, with a compound growth rate of only 3%, and one year (2022) of lower growth than the year before.

The warning is that “there is much more to be done,” in the IEA’s words. Partly due to the durability of incumbent energy systems — be they automobiles with a life of more than a decade, or a thermal power plant with a lifespan of 30 to 50 years. As the authors write, “The slow pace of the turnover of stock of most types of energy-related equipment means that there is a considerable lag between a technology becoming dominant in new deployments and that technology becoming dominant in the overall operating stock.”

This condition, then, means two things must prevail. One is the inexorable math of increasing installations of the new, which eventually forces incumbent systems into retirement. The second is policy, and a commitment not just to deploy what is needed, but also to retire what is not.

The market and policy can both embrace the logic of mass standardized technologies in their own ways, but ultimately drive toward the same goal.

Angela Rayner: Next Labour government will make misogyny a hate crime

Evening Standard

Oct 7, 2023

Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner has pledged that the next Labour government will make misogyny a hate crime.

She made the announcement during a speech at the annual Labour Women's Conference held in Liverpool.

Women, girls and youth join hands to tackle FGM in Djibouti

BIOLOGICAL MISOGYNY; BODY MUTILATION

8 October 2023

The UNFPA-supported network reaches has reached more than 7,000 youth with engaging messaging on the risks and dangers of FGM. Photo © UNFPA Djibouti

Djibouti’s innovative Elle & Elles network brings eight youth associations together to break taboos, raise awareness of the risks young people face and support their rights and choices.

Through talks and door-to-door visits, members meet young people to discuss HIV/AIDS, drug addiction, contraception, gender-based violence and female genital mutilation (FGM).

More than seven-in-ten women and girls aged 15 to 49 have endured FGM in Djibouti. Yet government data shows that the harmful practice decreased by eight per cent between 2012 and 2019, and fell by much higher rates among children aged zero to 10 in the last 30 years.

The UNFPA-supported network reaches more than 1,100 people each month, and has reached more than 7,000 youth with engaging messaging on the risks and dangers of FGM through working with influencers, media personalities and partners.

Djibouti’s innovative Elle & Elles network brings eight youth associations together to break taboos, raise awareness of the risks young people face and support their rights and choices. Photo © UNFPA Djibouti

Men and boys have a crucial role to play in improving gender-equality and countering harmful practices, and the UNFPA-supported National Men and Boys Network empowers young male leaders to promote gender-equality through innovative tools and events.

Initiatives led by the Men and Boys Network include a concert for 800 university students,, a café debate series on how positive masculinity can help end FGM, and a national declaration to end all forms of gender-based violence that was forged at Djibouti’s National Conference on the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in 2019.

This year, the Men and Boys Network has already reached around 900 young people where they meet on the beach, and through ‘Mijlis’ men’s assemblies, where around 100 men meet to make declarations of their commitment to abandoning FGM and all violence against women and girls.

Both the Elle and Elles and Men and Boys Networks join a range of UNFPA-supported campaigns in Djibouti, with a shared determination to end FGM and boost gender-equality.

“With a young, vibrant and growing population, Djibouti is brimming with talent, drive and energy, and UNFPA is here to support women, girls and youth to bring their transformative ideas to life,” said Aicha Ibrahim, UNFPA Head of Office in Djibouti.

Two months of fire and flood: Greece’s climate disasters, visualized

Record rainfall and wildfires have devastated the country since the summer. Here’s a look at the disasters that will leave the country changed for years.

A flooded road after Storm Elias in Sotirio, central Greece, on Sept. 29 and a burning tree after wildfires in Archanes, north of Athens, on Aug. 23.

Angelos Tzortzinis / AFP-Getty Images

Oct. 8, 2023,
By Mithil Aggarwal and Jiachuan Wu

Greece is at war with climate change.

Wildfires and record rainfall devastated the country this summer, first scorching entire forests then flooding complete towns.

Here’s a look at two months of disasters that will leave the country changed for years.
The fires

The blaze began near the city of Alexandroupolis in the eastern Evros region on Aug. 19, spreading rapidly, merging with smaller fires and forming an inferno that reduced hundreds of square miles of forest to dust and ash.

The extent of the Greek wildfires

More than 672 square miles have burned so far this year.

GREECE

Athens

BULGARIA

Burnt area

Aug. 19-Sept. 14

GREECE

Aegean Sea

GREECE

Athens

BULGARIA

Burnt area

Aug. 19-Sept. 14

GREECE

Aegean Sea

GREECE

Athens

BULGARIA

Burnt area

Aug. 19-Sept. 14

GREECE

Aegean Sea

Overnight, walls of flames raged through forests, prompting authorities to evacuate complete villages and hospitals as first responders battled to tame the fire for days.

Hundreds of firefighters from Greece and across the European Union were deployed along with dozens of aircraft.

The hot, tinder-dry conditions, which scientists said were made worse by climate change, created one of Greece’s hottest summers on record and the perfect conditions for blazes that killed at least 18 people.

While the total number of fires recorded through Wednesday this year, 51, is lower than last year’s total of 66, the blazes have burned almost nine times more land.

The fires were the largest ever faced by the European Union, Janez Lenarčič, the European commissioner for crisis management, said in August.

Scientists say extreme weather phenomena are only going to be more common as the effects of climate change worsen.

When all was over in early September, residents had begun to return to what remained of their villages only to be battered by record rainfall.
The floods

Storm Daniel, the deadly cyclone that flooded areas of the Mediterranean from Greece to Libya in early September, became one of the most fierce storms Greece had ever seen, sweeping houses off their foundations with rainfall that lasted three days and claimed at least 17 lives.

In the year to mid-September, 51 fires burned more than 672 square miles in Greece.

1,049

165

138

203

122

505

672

Homes and roads were destroyed, bridges collapsed, and fertile crops in the Thessaly plains in western Greece — known as the country’s breadbasket — were wiped out.

Many farmers lost their life’s work.

The flood area in Greece

GREECE

Athens

Aegean Sea

Flooding area as of Sept. 10

Larissa

Marathea

Palamas

Karditsa

In rural towns like Koskinas and Palamas, which were among some of the worst-hit areas, walls were ripped off of homes and cars were covered in thick sludge as people searched for their belongings for days.

Georgia Bloufa, a 60-year-old widow in Palamas, worked at a local restaurant that was destroyed by the floods. She escaped her family’s house around 5 a.m., her youngest grandson carried on his father’s shoulders. Her cousin called the police, but it was no use.

“They said they don’t know anything,” she previously told NBC News. “People were not warned.”

Flood damage in the village of Koskinas, in the central region of Thessaly, Greece

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said last month the country has faced “an unprecedented weather event, a catastrophe of immense proportions.”

“We need an unprecedented response,” he told European Parliament President Roberta Metsola.

Flood damage in the village of Agia Triada, Greece

Just a few days later, Storm Elias wreaked havoc on the port city of Volos, again flooding streets that had barely dried up from the previous disaster.

More than 3,000 people had been relocated due to the crippling rain, the country’s fire service said last week.

Mithil Aggarwal is a Hong Kong-based reporter/producer for NBC News.

Jiachuan Wu is a national interactive journalist for NBC News Digital.

'NOT INVINCIBLE'

Israel's security forces face questions after Hamas attack lays bare intelligence gaps
2023/10/08

By Emily Rose

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - As Israel reeled from a deadly attack by Hamas militants who broke through barriers around Gaza and roamed at will, killing scores of civilians in Israeli towns, defence chiefs faced growing questions over how the disaster could have happened.

A day after the 50th anniversary of the start of the 1973 Yom Kippur war, when Israeli forces were caught off guard by Syrian and Egyptian tank columns, the military appeared once again to have been surprised by a sudden attack.

"It looks quite similar to what happened at that time," said retired General Giora Eiland, a former head of Israel's National Security Council. "As we can see it, Israel was completely surprised, by a very well coordinated attack," he told a briefing with reporters.

An army spokesman said there would be discussions on the intelligence preparation "down the road" but for the moment the focus was on fighting. "We'll talk about that when we need to talk about it," he told a briefing with reporters.

Israel has always regarded Hamas as its sworn enemy, but since inflicting heavy damage on Gaza in a 10-day war in 2021, Israel had adopted a mix of carrot and stick to maintain stability in the blockaded enclave.

It offered economic incentives including thousands of work permits allowing Gazans to work in Israel or the occupied West Bank, while maintaining a tight blockade and the constant threat of air strikes.

For the past 18 months as violence has raged across the West Bank, Gaza had been relatively quiet, apart from sporadic cross border clashes mainly involving the smaller Islamic Jihad movement with Hamas remaining largely on the sidelines.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government has always made great play of its security credentials and taken an uncompromising stance towards the Palestinian militant factions including Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since 2007.

"INTELLIGENCE FAILURE"

However when the time came, Israel's security apparatus appeared to break down as a force of Hamas gunmen estimated in the hundreds by the military broke through security fences and scattered into towns.

"This was an intelligence failure; it could not be otherwise," said Jonathan Panikoff, the U.S. government's former deputy national intelligence officer on the Middle East, who is now at the Atlantic Council think tank.

"It was a security failure, undermining what was thought to be an aggressive and successful layered approach toward Gaza by Israel," he said.

For Israelis, images of dead bodies lying in the streets or groups of civilians being driven or marched into captivity in Gaza came as a profound shock.

More than 250 Israelis were killed and over 1,500 wounded, an unprecedented number of Israeli victims in a single day. The military suffered significant losses and Palestinian militant groups said they had captured dozens of soldiers.

The gunmen also seized security posts including a police station in the southern town of Sderot and overran the Erez crossing, a high security facility that channels people entering and leaving Gaza through a tight series of controls.

On Saturday, Hamas media circulated footage showing fighters ranging through abandoned offices and running past the high concrete walls of the site.

"They've been planning this for a long time," said former Israeli National Security Advisor Eyal Hulata. "Obviously this is a very coordinated attack, and unfortunately they were able to surprise us tactically and cause devastating damage."

(Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Chris Reese)

© Reuters

Analysis-In striking Israel, Hamas also took aim at Middle East security realignment
2023/10/08

By Samia Nakhoul, Nidal al-Mughrabi, Matt Spetalnick and Laila Bassam

DUBAI/GAZA/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When Islamist group Hamas launched a spectacular attack against Israel, it also took aim at efforts to forge new regional security alignments that could threaten Palestinian aspirations for statehood and the ambitions of the group's main backer Iran.

Saturday's assault, the biggest incursion into Israel in decades, coincides with U.S.-backed moves to push Saudi Arabia towards normalising ties with Israel in return for a defence deal between Washington and Riyadh, a move that would slam the brakes on the kingdom's recent rapprochement with Tehran.

Palestinian officials and a regional source said the gunmen who stormed Israeli towns, killing 250 Israelis and taking hostages, were also delivering a message that the Palestinians could not be ignored if Israel wanted security and that any Saudi deal would scupper the detente with Iran.

More than 250 Gazans have been killed in Israel's response.

"All the agreements of normalisation that you (Arab states) signed with (Israel) will not end this conflict," Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas which runs Gaza, said on Al Jazeera television.

A regional source familiar with the thinking of Iran and that of the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah added: "This is a message to Saudi Arabia, which is crawling towards Israel, and to the Americans who are supporting normalisation and supporting Israel. There is no security in the whole region as long as Palestinians are left outside of the equation."

"What happened is beyond any expectation," the source said. "Today is a turning point in the conflict."

The Hamas attack launched from Gaza follows months of rising violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, with stepped-up Israeli raids, Palestinian street attacks and assaults by Jewish settlers on Palestinian villages. Conditions for Palestinians have worsened under the hard-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Peacemaking has been stalled for years.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and Israel have both indicated they are moving closer to a normalisation deal. But sources previously told Reuters the kingdom's determination to secure a U.S. defence pact meant it would not hold up a normalisation agreement to win substantive concessions for the Palestinians.

Laura Blumenfeld, a Middle East analyst at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies in Washington, said Hamas may have lashed out due to a sense that it was facing irrelevance as efforts advanced toward broader Israeli-Arab relations.

"As Hamas watched the Israelis and Saudis move close to an agreement, they decided: no seat at the table? Poison the meal,” she said.

TIMING THE ASSAULT

Osama Hamdan, the leader of Hamas in Lebanon, told Reuters that Saturday's operation should make Arab states realise that accepting Israeli security demands would not bring peace.

"For those who want stability and peace in the region, the starting point must be to end the Israeli occupation," he said. "Some (Arab states) unfortunately started imagining that Israel could be the gateway for America to defend their security."

Netanyahu promised "mighty vengeance for this black day" after the launch of Saturday's attack, which came almost exactly 50 years since the start of the Yom Kippur War in 1973 when Israel was attacked by Egyptian and Syrian forces and fought for its survival.

Mirroring the timing of the 1973 war, Hamas official Ali Baraka said of Saturday's assault: "It was necessary that the leadership of the resistance take a decision at the appropriate time, when the enemy is distracted with its feasts."

He said the assault by air, land and sea was "a shock to the enemy and proved the Israeli military intelligence failed to find out about this operation," after Israel, which prides itself on its infiltration and monitoring of militants, was taken by surprise.

In the years since 1973, Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel and several other Arab states have also since normalised ties, including some Gulf Arab states next to Saudi Arabia. But the Palestinians have moved no closer to their aspiration of securing a state, which looks as distant a prospect as ever.

"While not likely the main driver of the attacks, Hamas’s actions send a clear reminder to the Saudis that the Palestinian issue should not be treated as just another subtopic in normalisation negotiations," Richard LeBaron, a former U.S. Middle East diplomat now at the Atlantic Council thinktank, wrote.

IRAN'S REACH

A senior official in U.S. President Joe Biden's administration told reporters it was "really premature to speculate" about the effect the Israeli-Hamas conflict could have on efforts towards Saudi-Israeli normalisation.

"I would say for certain Hamas, terrorist groups like Hamas, will not derail any such outcome. But that process has a ways to go," added the official, speaking on conditional of anonymity.

Netanyahu has previously said the Palestinians should not be allowed to veto any new Israeli peace deals with Arab states.

A regional source familiar with the Saudi-Israeli-U.S. negotiations over normalisation and a defence pact for the kingdom said Israel was committing a mistake by refusing to make concessions to the Palestinians.

In its response to Saturday's attacks, Saudi Arabia called for an "immediate cessation of violence" between both sides.

Iran, meanwhile, has made no secret of its backing for Hamas, funding and arming the group and another Palestinian militant organisation Islamic Jihad. Tehran called Saturday's attack an act of self-defence by Palestinians.

Yahya Rahim Safavi, adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Tehran would stand by the Palestinian fighters "until the liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem."

A Palestinian official, close to Islamist militant groups, said after the Hamas attack began with a huge barrage of rockets fired from Gaza: "Iran has hands, not one hand, in every rocket that is fired into Israel."

"It doesn't mean that they ordered (Saturday's) attack but it is not a secret that it is thanks to Iran, (that) Hamas and the Islamic Jihad have been able to upgrade their arsenal," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Iran's backing for Palestinian groups is part of a broader network of militias and armed groups it supports across the Middle East, giving Tehran a powerful presence in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, as well as Gaza.

Analysts said Iran already appeared to have sent a signal last week that a Saudi deal would hit Riyadh's detente with Tehran, when Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi group killed four Bahraini soldiers in a cross-border strike near the Saudi-Yemeni border. That attack jeopardised peace talks to end Yemen's eight-year conflict.

Dennis Ross, a former Middle East negotiator who is now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in Washington, added: "This is all about preventing the U.S.-Saudi-Israel breakthrough."

(Reporting by Samia Nakhoul and Parisa Hafezi in Dubai, Nidal El Mughrabi in Gaza, Laila Bassam in Beirut, Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Writing by Samia Nakhoul; Editing by Edmund Blair)