The World of Arabs The world of Arabs (the WoA), as a distinctive part of the globe, is of extreme significance for both global politics and the global economy. On the other hand, this region is featured by slow democratic development, political instability, religious extremism (Islamic fundamentalism), and many reasons for long-time inter-ethnic conflicts especially on the Israeli-Arab relations and regional insecurity. It is quite obvious that the WoA needs comprehensive political, social, and economic reforms which the Arab Spring’s protesters clearly requested in 2010−2013. The crucial issues of reforms are about national development and governance, a succession of political authority, removal of political authoritarianism, and Arab relations with Israel and the USA. The WoA is composed politically of 22 member states of the Arab League Organization (officially, The League of Arab States) including those from the regions of the Middle East and North Africa (the MENA), and connected by numerous bilateral and multilateral conventions and agreements. On the one hand, those 22 member states are different in size, governmental form, and richness of natural resources, but on the other hand, all of them possess many common attributes that are culturally, confessionally, and ethnically unifying them: language, alphabet, religion, history, customs, values, and traditions. League of Arab States This league seeks to promote political, cultural, and economic cooperation between its 22 member states (including representatives of Palestine from the PLO) on two continents. It was founded in 1945 by six founding Arab states: Iraq, Egypt, Transjordan (today Jordan), Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. One of the first and focal political acts by the league was an economic boycott of Zionist Israel from its proclamation in 1948 until the Oslo Accords in 1993. However, its attempt to present a united political (Arab) platform on some broader issues followed by harmonious economic cooperation is up to now limited usually due to American interference in Arab affairs. Nevertheless, such failure as well as is a result of the way of functioning of the Arab League Organization as its decisions are binding only for the member states that voted for them. Internal factors, in addition, like a form of state (monarchy or republic) have influenced Arab states’ disagreeing policies. External relations, as well, are historically and currently dividing Arab nations within the league. For instance, during the Cold War 1.0, they supported different sides either the USA or the USSR. Contemporarily, the nature of their relations with different external actors (Russia, China, USA) directly determined the political and economic actions by the member states of the Arab League Organization that were visible, for instance, in the cases of two Gulf Wars or the Arab Spring in 2010−2013. In 2011, the Arab League Organization condemned Libya’s leader Muammar Gadaffi’s [alleged] human rights abuses and called for the imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya in an unprecedented request for UNSC intervention. The Historical Context Most of the world of Arabs for some four centuries consisted of provinces under the Ottoman Empire (Sultanate). The first half of the 16th century experienced a great power advance of the three crucial Islamic empires at that time: the Ottoman Empire on three continents, the Safavid Empire in Persia, and the Mughal Empire in India. In the middle of the same century, these three Islamic states controlled a broad portion of territory and seas from Morocco, Austria, and Ethiopia to Central Asia, the Himalayas, and the Bay of Bengal. Much of Central Asia was in the possession of another Turkish dynasty – the Uzbek Shaybanids, whose capital was in Bukhara. Khanates with Muslim rulers existed in the Crimea and on the Volga River at Kazan and Astrakhan. All these states have been established by Turkish-speaking Muslim dynasties with an extreme military feature. All except the Safavid Empire in Persia were of Sunni Islam, but the Safavids, however, followed Shia Islam. This historical fact encouraged sharp antagonism, rivalry, and warfare in which the Middle Eastern Arabs have been involved. Up to 1639, a majority of the Arabs became governed by the Ottoman Sultans. By the death of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror in 1481, the Ottoman Turks conquered the Byzantine capital Constantinople, and the biggest portions of the Balkans. Thereafter, the sudden revival of Islamic Persia under the ruler Ismail I (1500−1524) pushed them back to the western part of the Middle East. However, Ismail of Persia was defeated in 1514, and Syria and Egypt have been conquered in 1516−1517 by the Ottomans. From that time onward, the Ottoman Empire was indisputably the greatest Muslim state of the time. In around 1530, the Ottoman subjects numbered around 14 million compared to England which had 2.5 million, or Spain 5 million. To the European observers of a different kind, the power of the Ottoman Turks followed by the strength and discipline of the Ottoman army were matters of admiration and respectful concern. The end of the Ottoman Empire after WWI should have resulted in the independence and self-governance of the Arab people. However, the provisions of the secret British-French Sykes-Picot Agreement (May 16th, 1916) between Foreign Ministers of the UK and France, divided and kept most of the WoA under their imperial rule. Two decades after WWII, some parts of the WoA are still fighting against colonial domination by the West. For instance, French colonialism finished in 1946 in Lebanon and Syria, in 1956 in Morocco and Tunisia, and in 1962 in Algeria. Differently to France, however, the Bretons at the same time after WWII sought, by all means, to extend their colonial power in the Middle East by signing treaties and making connections with loyal Arab local rulers. Ottoman Empire Map 1914 - Map Of The Usa With State Names Nevertheless, the impact of the Western colonial legacy on the new Arab countries is enduring at least for the next focal reasons: The Western colonial order established traditional systems of administration with absolute family rule in the majority of colonial-ruled Arab communities. Over time, the colonists offered their loyal Arab regimes financial, military, and technological support. The political authority and territorial-administrative border have been marked, recognized, and institutionalized in order to protect the present situation. Nevertheless, what was created and maintained as political entities by the French and the Bretons was not for the reason of coherence and economic functioning nor because of historical reasons but, primarily, to satisfy their colonial-imperial interests. The legacy of the British colonial rule of Palestine (the Mandate), from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the British withdrawal in 1948, not only failed to integrate or harmonize the wishes of Judeo-Jewish and Arab Palestinian communities but, contrary intensified the differences to be one of the most bloody conflicts in the post-WWII history up to our days (The 2023−2024 Gazan War, Israeli aggression on South Lebanon in 2024). Political anti-colonial opposition groups started to be formed in the Arab Middle East and North Africa between two world wars and originally had the aims of resisting foreign colonial power and administration and gathering the Arabs to support their own political independence. The opposition movements later fought for the system’s reforms of Government and demanded benefits for the working class and those coming from the poor social strata. A social stratum has been created and grew increasingly large as the process of modernization followed by oil revenues gradually transformed the societies of the MENA. The new working class became directed against both foreign (Western) occupants and their capital of exploitation. It became a national struggle and attracted those Arabs who had been marginalized within their societies. Step by step, the opposition political groups, parties, and movements within the WoA attracted socialists, Islamists, communists, and nationalists for the realization of their political and national tasks. Therefore, the historical context of the Arab position in the contemporary Middle East is crucial for an objective understanding of current tensions and wars, but as well as for bridging a historical gap of values between the WoA and the West. Foreign (Western) involvement and occupation of Arab provinces in the Middle East, nevertheless, did not end with independence. The most troubling problem pondered by Arabs today is the burdensome, humiliating fact that the Arab region is the only part of the world where foreign armies today still invade and occupy the Arab lands. However, present Western claims of advocacy of democracy and freedom are deeply mixed with the images of historical Western colonial domination and occupation in the contemporary Arab collective memories. The second Gulf War in 2003, or the Western military invasion of Iraq, well illustrated how the problems of the region of the Arab Middle East very often are to be transformed into a state of greater regional complexity and broader international significance. However, instead of progress toward solutions to the current problems, the Arabs appeared to be involved in a situation of total insecurity and administrative-institutional incapacity. On one hand, while reforms are a common wish in the Arab countries, it is, on the other hand, unclear how to break out old undemocratic political models of governmental administration, and how to develop and encourage competent, ethical, and accountable systems of governance in the majority of the MENA countries as it was clearly put on agenda during the Arab Spring in 2010−2013. Besides, no less challenging for the Arabs is to be able to lead effectively within a new reality in global politics and international relations where „pre-emption“ with armed forces and „threatening diplomacy“ are increasingly becoming the methods of choice for conflict resolution. The Arab Spring (December 17th, 2010−October 26th, 2013) The Arab Spring started in mid-December 2010 in Tunisia and in the spring of next year, people’s demonstrations brought an end to the regime of Tunisian autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali which lasted for 23 years. The Tunisian protests started because Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire when he could no longer pay police bribes. However, those political and pro-democratic events in Tunisia immediately inspired protests against similar authoritarian regimes in the MENA region like in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Iraq, Jordan, Bahrain, and Oman. Nevertheless, while on one hand Arab protests fastly spread out from one state to another in the region, on the other hand, general regime change across the Arab MENA did not come as quickly as it was in the case of Tunisia. During the Arab Spring and up to the present, there are thousands of protesters in the MENA region who are tortured, imprisoned, or sentenced to the death penalty. The Arab Spring continued in Syria, Yemen, and Libya up to now in the form of a prolonged civil war in which different groups of Islamic fundamentalists took participation. As the Arab Spring in some Arab countries became transformed into a long and devastating civil war, the initial optimism by the international community to the protests of 2010−2013 which have been understood as a democratic cross-regional movement, became gradually pessimistic. It has to be noticed that the Arab states that have been hit by the Arab Spring (revolution and counter-revolution) are sharing a lot of common features. Their unique politics of inner affairs and international relations shaped their contemporary histories. As a common feature of the Arab Spring was the fact that the street protesters had in common a rejection of dictatorial regimes and a desire for both constitutional and representative governmental administration. However, some crucial differences between Arab countries existed too. Therefore, there are three crucial themes to be particularly presented in order to properly understand the state of turmoil in which the MENA region found itself during the time of the Arab Spring: 1) Economic failure, 2) State repression, and 3) Geopolitical context. Some of the focal features of the Arab Spring can be summarized as follows: Poor long-term economic growth across the MENA region surely contributed a lot to people’s dissatisfaction with the economic situation. In general, the economic growth of the world of Arabs is during the last half of the century negative and, consequently, rates of unemployment, underemployment, and poverty were among the highest in the world in 2010 on the eve of the Arab Spring. Social inequalities increased followed by the corruption and the practices of clientelism of ruling classes. The incident in Tunisia in mid-December 2010 with Mohamed Bouazizi clearly stressed the Arab Spring’s economic and political dimensions. The Arabs who took the street had the aim to secure democratic freedoms and to crucially improve the accountability of their Governments and Presidents/Kings (the executive powers). However, at the same time, they required the recognition of their human and political rights as citizens followed by protection from repression at the hands of the state and its corrupted institutions. The international dimension of the Arab Spring is differently presented by different types of academic researchers and actors in international relations. On one hand, many regional orientalists claim that the (Arab) people of the MENA region (North Africa and the Middle East) are simply ungovernable and, therefore, they deserve autocratic rule, but the other experts emphasize that external actors share responsibility for ill-targeted economic policies and hard-line state repression. It is, for instance, well-known the negative influence of the IMF policies on Arab employment results or that the promotion of export economies by Western external actors (the EU) actively shaped the economic policies of the Arab nations. External factors in addition to having a strong impact on shaping the economy of the world of Arabs, they, as well as, supported the regional autocratic regimes from the Cold War 1.0 onward. However, the essence of the Arab Spring was that external factors continued to do so when demonstrations and uprisings started. Western external actors hesitated to express clear support for the protesters for the reason of their concerns for stability, prioritization of anti-terrorism and anti-Islamic radicalism policies, and consideration of their bilateral relations with a Zionist Israel. Even the Arab Governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, or regional Iran, had a strong influence on the outcomes of the Arab Spring by supporting existing political authorities or certain military-political organizations (ex., Hamas and Hezbollah). * Click the share button below to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles. Birds Not Bombs: Let’s Fight for a World of Peace, Not War Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović is a former university professor in Vilnius, Lithuania. He is a Research Fellow at the Center for Geostrategic Studies. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. Featured image: A globe map of the world, highlighting the Arab world in green, and disputed areas in light green. (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0) https://www.globalresearch.ca/world-arabs/5871053

The Betrayal of Gaza Again: Mumia Abu-Jamal It was by any measure a stunning moment. An American president essentially offering to gentrify the Gaza Strip, suggesting that they, should they resist, be forced to leave their historical homeland by the Armed Forces of the United States. “They’re living in hell,” Trump said, as he sat next to the man who ordered the hell bombed into hell, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump said these coastal lands could be made into a lovely kind of Riviera. “It’d be beautiful,” he said. Netanyahu beamed at every word, and while Trump saw it as a grand real estate deal perhaps, Netanyahu saw it as the ultimate Zionist dream. Palestinians saw it as the ultimate nightmare for they have lived for the better part of a century with political betrayal since Israel’s founding in 1948. For over 70 years they have lived under an occupation that the UN has called illegal, but that doesn’t mean a thing. Now the US exhorts an illegal removal of Palestinians, millions of them, from their own homeland. Is this the gentrification of Gaza? Probably not. But who can really say? Who indeed? We can only hope that Palestinians have the last word. With love, not fear, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal. These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio. Click the share button below to email/forward this article. Follow us on Instagram and X and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost Global Research articles with proper attribution. Featured image source Global Research is a reader-funded media. We do not accept any funding from corporations or governments. Help us stay afloat. Click the image below to make a one-time or recurring donation. https://www.globalresearch.ca/betrayal-gaza-again/5879700

A Thief’s Mentality: Trump, Real Estate and Dreams of Ethnic Cleansing President Donald J. Trump likes teasing out the unmentionable, and the Israel-Palestinian situation was hardly going to be any different. With a touch of horror and the grotesque, he offered a solution to the issue of what would happen to Gaza at the conclusion of hostilities. In a White House press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he declared that the United States “take over and own the Gaza Strip”, in the process promising to “create an economic development that will supply an unlimited number of jobs and housing for people of the area.” The strip, one of the most densely populated stretches of territory on the planet, would be reconstructed, redeveloped and turned, effectively, into a beach resort, “the Riviera of the Middle East.” Here was the double battering being dished out to an impoverished, tormented, tortured population: not only would any aspiration of political independence and Palestinian sovereignty be terminated, it would reach its terminus in the form of tourist capitalism and real estate transactions. This development idea in Trumpland is not new. In October 2024, the then Republican presidential candidate told a radio interviewer that Gaza could be “better than Monaco”, provided it was built in the appropriate way. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, conceded at an event held at Harvard in February last year that “waterfront property” in Gaza “could be very valuable”. Israel, he proposed, could “move the people out and then clean it up”. The logistics of the plan remain inscrutable. Trump does not envisage using US troops in the endeavour (“No soldiers by the US would be needed!”), but Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz has already ordered the military to draft plans for Palestinians wishing to “voluntarily” leave. With heaped upon praise, Katz thought the plan would “allow a large population in Gaza to leave for various places in the world” via land crossings, sea and air. He also suggested that the Palestinians find abodes in such countries as Spain and Norway, countries critical of Israel’s war efforts. For those countries not to accept them would expose “their hypocrisy”. Netanyahu, for his part, saw Trump’s Gaza plan as “completely different”, offering a “much better vision for Israel”. It would open “up many, many possibilities for us.” He was particularly delighted by the notion that Gazans could leave. “The actual idea of allowing Gazans who want to leave – I mean, what’s wrong with that?” he told Fox News. “They can leave, they can then come back.” Informed cynicism hardly permits such a view to be taken seriously, and a number of Israeli politicians would simply see such departures as a prelude to rebuilding Jewish settlements. On Truth Social, Trump insisted that Palestinians would be duly “resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region.” Where in the region he does not say. He also makes no mention of Hamas as an obstacle, a group Israel has failed to eliminate despite various lofty claims. For those in Congress, and for allies of the United States to agree with this, would be tantamount to signing off on a gross violation of international law. The phenomenon of ethnic cleansing, so aggressively evident in the redrawing of boundaries in Europe and the Indian subcontinent after the Second World War, came, in time, to be seen as a category almost as heinous as genocide. It did not take too long for the human rights advocates to see through the plan’s inherent nastiness. To displace Palestinians from Gaza, argued Navi Pillay, chair of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, could not be seen as anything other than proposed ethnic cleansing. “Trump is woefully ignorant of international law and the law of occupation. Forcible displacement of an occupied group is an international crime, and amounts to ethnic cleansing,” she explained to POLITICO. Other states that are expected to have some say in the political arrangements of post-war Gaza have been, in various measures, cold and aghast at the proposal. Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry, for instance, stated that Palestinian statehood “is not the subject of negotiation or concessions”. Columnist Hamoud Abu Taleb, writing for Okaz, suggested that Trump believed “that countries are no different from his Mar-a-Lago resort and can be taken over in deals, and if necessary, by force.” The attitude from certain Palestinians returning to their ruined homes captured the sentiment most acutely of all. Muhammad Abdel Majeed, a man in his mid-30s who returned to northern Gaza to find the family home in Jabalia refugee camp pulverised, felt that Trump was operating with “a thief’s mentality”. It was one that placed investments and money before “a person’s right to a decent life”. Thieving it may well be, but the Trump formula may simply be a provocation designed to draw upon Arab involvement. A bluff is a possibility, insofar as a threat to occupy or displace the residents of Gaza prompts Arab states to supply forces while also considering the process of normalisation with Israel. Much in law entails the twist and the crack that turns a benign expression into something sinister. It can also render the sinister benign. While greeted as “innovative” and an inducement for other states to put forth their own Gaza proposals, to execute with any seriousness a measure to displace a whole, brutalised population would not only be criminal but a further incitement to violence. It hardly matters that such violence will be exercised by Hamas or some successor organisation. What matters is that it will take place with relentless, retributive tenacity. * Click the share button below to email/forward this article. Follow us on Instagram and X and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost Global Research articles with proper attribution. Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Email: [email protected] Featured image source Global Research is a reader-funded media. We do not accept any funding from corporations or governments. Help us stay afloat. Click the image below to make a one-time or recurring donation. https://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-real-estate-dreams-ethnic-cleansing/5879642

Rothschild’s Gaza Land Grab It was disappointing enough that President Trump’s first meeting with a foreign leader was with Israeli war criminal Bibi Netanyahu. But it got worse. During their joint press conference he shocked the world by announcing that the US wanted to simply take over Gaza and turn it into a “riviera” for Trump’s billionaire friends, some of whom he owes lots of money. Image: Wilbur Ross (Public Domain) undefined It was Rothschild Inc. bond trader Wilbur Ross who handled Donald Trump’s bankruptcy. In exchange for the Rothschilds bailing Trump out, Trump agreed to let his name become a lucrative brand for his bankster creditors. Ross was rewarded by becoming Trump’s first Secretary of Commerce. And the Rothschilds picked up the Taj Mahal casino and other Atlantic City properties on the cheap. As for the indentured Trump, he would be charged with becoming a two-term US President who would preside over a new “Golden Age”, were the Annunaki Crown billionaire class would come completely out of the closet and rule over a Novus Ordo Seclorum- a New Secular Order with Satanism as its ethos. In March 2024 Trump’s son-in-law and dual Israeli citizen Jared Kushner said Gaza had “very valuable” potential for its “waterfront property”. The idea all along was that Israel would push all Palestinians out of Gaza and simply take it. It’s why they wanted Egypt to open the Rafah Gate. But Egypt knew the plan so it refused to do so. In addition to the Rothschild riviera plan, there is also the Rothschild energy plan. In 1999 British Gas (BG) discovered a significant gas field in the Gaza Marine fields just 20 miles off Gaza. The Palestinian Authority granted BG a 25-year exploratory concession as a partner, but the Israelis blocked its development. In 2016 Royal Dutch Shell, whose biggest shareholder is Victor Rothschild, paid BG $52 million for the field. But they would not help the PA develop it either. If the US were to take over Gaza, surely the Rothschilds would commence with its development. Trump’s declaration yesterday can only be seen as blatant colonialist piracy. It harkens back to the days when the Knights Templar ransacked and looted the entire planet for their Crown Bloodline masters. On the heels of his Stargate announcement and with all this talk of a “Golden Age”, it appears that this is precisely the idea. No matter what else he does, Trump’s subservience to Israel and his indebtedness to that nation’s founding Rothschild family will doom not only his Presidency but quite possibly our nation. One thing is certain. It will only strengthen the resolve of the Axis of Resistance. Click the share button below to email/forward this article. Follow us on Instagram and X and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost Global Research articles with proper attribution. Featured image source Global Research is a reader-funded media. We do not accept any funding from corporations or governments. Help us stay afloat. Click the image below to make a one-time or recurring donation. https://www.globalresearch.ca/rothschild-gaza-land-grab/5879763

New neocon manifesto: Keep US troops in the Middle East forever [email protected] January 29, 2025 deal of the century, Elliott Abrams, foreign policy, Iran US relations, neocon The ‘Vandenberg Coalition’ wants Trump to prioritize Israel and maintain Iran as enemy number one By Jim Lobe, Reposted from Responsible Statecraft A leading neoconservative for most of the last half-century has released a comprehensive series of recommendations on Middle East policy for the new Trump administration nearly all of which are ideas that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party would happily embrace. The 16-page report, entitled “Deals of the Century: Solving the Middle East,” is published by the Vandenberg Coalition, which was founded and chaired by Elliott Abrams, who has held senior foreign policy posts in every Republican administration since Ronald Reagan (except George H.W. Bush’s), including as Special Envoy for Venezuela and later for Iran during Trump’s first term. Created shortly after former President Biden took office, the Coalition has acted as a latter-day Project for the New American Century, a letterhead organization that acted as a hub and platform for pro-Likud neoconservatives, aggressive nationalists, and the Christian Right in mobilizing public support for the “Global War on Terror,” the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the move away from a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, particularly under the George W. Bush administration in which Abrams served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Near East and North African Affairs, surviving a number of purges of leading neoconservatives in that administration after the Iraq occupation went south. The new report predictably calls for the new administration to “use all elements of [U.S.] national power” to prevent Iran, “the greatest threat to American interests in the Middle East and the cause of most of the region’s security problems,” from acquiring a nuclear bomb. It describes Israel as “our cornerstone ally in the region” to which Washington should provide all “the weapons it needs [to] help it win the war and prevent wider escalation.” The recommendations also call for Washington to maintain its military presence in both Iraq and Syria, to suspend all aid to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) “until it demonstrates a willingness to oppose Hezbollah, accelerate U.S. arms sales, and broaden intelligence cooperation with the UAE,” and enhance military and security cooperation with Saudi Arabia provided it “pivot[s] away from China and Russia.” It also calls for the Saudis to “increase [its] foreign direct investment commitments in U.S industries,” and “cease public statements” critical of Israel and supportive of Iran. “…[En]hanced cooperation with Saudi Arabia,” the report insists, “should be contingent on their being unequivocal about what side they are on.” Washington should also designate Iraq’s Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) and related militias as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) and stop engaging with them politically, and work with Yemen’s Saudi-backed Presidential Leadership Council against the Houthis whose designation as an FTO by the Trump administration last week was applauded in the report. On the new government in Syria, the report says that ongoing sanctions, which helped cripple the country’s economy, should not be lifted “unless the new government proves to be a responsible actor,” although it does not describe what that would mean in any detail. Aside from Iran’s status as Enemy Number One in the report, special scorn was reserved for Qatar, which has played a central role in mediating between Israel and Hamas regarding the fate of Israelis held in Gaza and Palestinians detained in Israel. Similar contempt is reserved for the Palestinian Authority headed by Mahmoud Abbas, for various U.N. agencies, notably “the nefariousness [sic] UNRWA,” which has worked with Palestinian refugees and their families across the Middle East for more than 70 years, and for senior UN human rights officials who deal with the Israel-Palestine conflict in particular. Washington “should immediately cease all funding to UNRWA” and also to UNIFIL, the U.N. peacekeeping force deployed along the Lebanese-Israeli border unless its troops are given the authority and demonstrate the will to confront Hezbollah forces in the area. As for Qatar, it “has worked to undermine U.S. interests by cooperating with Iran and sheltering terrorist groups like Hamas,” according to the report. “With much better friends like the Saudis, Washington no longer needs to tolerate destabilizing Qatari behavior,” and thus should move U.S. Central Command’s forward headquarters out of Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base and revoke Doha’s “Major Non-Nato Ally status unless its behavior changes.” That status should be conferred on the UAE instead, according to the report, provided that it “reduces [its] reliance on Russian and Chinese vendors” of military equipment. The report, which describes the politics of the Biden administration in the Middle East on more than one occasion as “appeasement,” mainly of Iran, reminds the reader that Trump declared only last month that “the Middle East is going to get solved,” a phrase that undoubtedly inspired the report’s title: “Deals of the Century: Solving the Middle East.” While the report says it was the product of a “working group of Middle East experts,” no names other than Abrams, Gabriel Scheinemann, and Daniel Samet, the latter two neoconservatives from the Alexander Hamilton Society, appear in the report. Normally, reports by letterhead organizations list their contributors. In presenting what it calls “key American interests in the Middle East,” the report puts “preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons at the top of the list” but also expresses alarm at Chinese Communist Party inroads in the region, noting that CCP is Washington’s “key global adversary.” In an echo of the Global War on Terror, Washington, it says, should also “deny jihadi terrorists a safe haven,” a reference in part to the necessity its authors feel to retain U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq. But “America’s alliance with Israel is central to U.S. interests in the region, given that it promotes American values within the Middle East and provides the first line of defense against Iranian aggression.” Moreover, Washington should try to expand the Abraham Accords, and “the Palestinian question must not impede Israel’s normalization with Arab and Muslim countries or otherwise compromise its security.” Washington must “ensure Israel has the tools to defend itself.” Yet another interest is to expand access of our allies and partners in Europe and elsewhere to the region’s energy supplies, according to the report. To increase pressure on Iran, Washington should not only reinstate Trump’s “ maximum pressure” campaign, but include within it convincing Britain, France, and Germany to “snapback sanctions” against Tehran at the U.N. Remarkably perhaps, it offers the possibility of a new nuclear agreement that would “forbid Iranian uranium enrichment beyond the small amounts need for a civilian nuclear program,” something that the 2015 JCPOA, which Trump withdrew from in 2018, actually accomplished before Trump, under the influence of neoconservatives like Abrams, withdrew from in 2018. If a deal can be reached, according to the report, it should be dealt with as a treaty; that is, made subject to a 2/3 majority vote in the Senate. With respect to the Palestinians in the wake of the last 15 months of war in Gaza, “American policy toward the Palestinians must prioritize the security of Israel and our Arab partners.” Washington “must impose standards for good governance. The U.S. should “allow an Arab trusteeship to control Gaza after the war.” In words that must warm Netanyahu’s heart, the report notes “the weakness and incompetence of the PA mean it cannot govern Gaza,” and “Israel will need to maintain security control to prevent Hamas from rebuilding but should not and does not wish to govern Gaza itself.” Abrams has a long history with both Palestine and Gaza, notably during the Bush administration. After Hamas was an unexpected election victor over its rival Fatah in the 2006 elections – which were hailed as the freest and fairest elections in the Arab world at the time – Abrams and other senior officials encouraged the mounting of an armed coup against Hamas led by Fatah’s local leader and Abrams’ favorite Muhammad Dahlan which, in turn, sparked a brief civil war in the enclave in which Hamas emerged victorious and stronger than ever. After the fiasco, Dahlan moved to the UAE, and there has been much speculation that he stands to play a key role on behalf of the Emirates if the kind of “Arab trusteeship” alongside Israeli security forces is established as recommended by the report. Perhaps the most novel recommendation is based on the report’s contention that Iran’s non-state allies in the region typically use non-combatants as human shields — an apparent endorsement of Israel’s defense of its bombing of apartment houses, schools, and other buildings in Gaza and Lebanon during the past 15 months that have killed well over 46,000 people, most of them women and children. “The United States should propose a Security Council resolution that states the use of human shields is a crime under international law and that those who use human shields are responsible for the civilian deaths in which they result,” the report advised. Jim Lobe is a Contributing Editor of Responsible Statecraft. He formerly served as chief of the Washington bureau of Inter Press Service from 1980 to 1985 and again from 1989 to 2015. RELATED: WATCH: How Pro-Israel Neocons Pushed for War in Iraq (Alison Weir) (2021) Israel loyalists embedded in U.S. government pushed U.S. into Iraq War Clean Break II: Iran Hawks Decide to Burn it All Down War on Iran? Lobe: The role of the Weekly Standard, devoted to Israel, in promoting war Every accusation a confession: Israel and the double lie of ‘human shields’ Gaza has turned into Biden’s most perplexing moral and foreign policy failure https://israelpalestinenews.org/elliot-abrams-neocon/