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Defense & Security
Mersin Turkey - 23.06.2021: Yavuz Drillship on the mediterranean sea. Drillships of Turkey which is search and drill for natural gas and oils.

Mavi Vatan: The turkish strategy for Resources in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea

by Jessica Martínez Pluma

In February 2019, the Turkish Naval Force carried out a large-scale military exercise in the Aegean Sea, the Black Sea, and the Eastern Mediterranean Sea to test the operation of the new weapons and naval systems acquired by the country over the last decade. At first, this event did not generate adverse reactions from the international community, but six months later alarm bells rang when, during a speech by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at Turkey’s National Defense University, a map was publicly displayed showing what the Republic of Turkey considered to be its sovereign maritime domains. This later became associated with a concept known as Mavi Vatan. Proposed by Admiral Cihat Yaycı and developed by Admiral Cem Gürdeniz, Mavi Vatan or the Blue Homeland Doctrine is a project and geostrategic representation of Turkey with the intention of claiming the state’s supposed jurisdiction over parts of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea. It demonstrates Turkey’s dissatisfaction with the limits established by international law—the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982)—and upholds its right to the legitimate defense of sovereignty over what it asserts are its maritime domains: 462,000 km² comprising its territorial waters, its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), and its continental shelf (Denizeau, A., 2021).  Figure 1: Map of ‘Mavi Vatan’ or the Blue Homeland Doctrine publicly displayed during President Erdoğan’s speech at Turkey’s National Defense University (August 2019). Source: Wikimedia Commons ‘Mavi Vatan’ not only represents a historical claim regarding the events of 2004, when the Republic of Cyprus became an official member of the European Union and established its own maritime borders as a state, which, under the framework of international law, pushed the Republic of Turkey into a narrow strip of sea in which to operate. At the same time, Mavi Vatan emerged as a solution to the growing security challenges that have arisen in the last decade of the 21st century, challenges that have threatened not only the integrity of the state itself but also all those elements that guarantee its survival in the international arena; in this case, Turkey’s access to energy resources. With projections that the Republic of Turkey will reach 90 million inhabitants by 2030 (Martín, L; n.d.), the Turkish state is aware of the increasing energy demands needed to adequately meet the needs of a rapidly growing population. To satisfy that demand, it is compelled to seek optimal sources of income to achieve this purpose. In response—and knowing of the large hydrocarbon reserves discovered in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea in recent years (Zeballos Rivero, M., 2024)—Turkey has turned to Mavi Vatan as a solution. If successfully implemented, it would allow Turkey to establish an area for the exploration and exploitation of resources lying beneath these waters to cover its urgent energy needs. The problem? Turkey is not the only interested party. Countries such as Israel, Lebanon, and Egypt, sharing coastlines with the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, are also engaged in heated disputes over legitimate access to these energy resources. However, the most pressing rivalry remains between Turkey and Cyprus, who, having relatively greater capacities to extract energy resources, have been at the forefront of an active dispute to claim sovereignty over these hydrocarbons.  Figure 2: Map of the EEZs of the Eastern Mediterranean countries and also of Mavi Vatan. Source: Emmanouilidis, C. (2020, August 31). Tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean. European Data Journalist Network. https://www.europeandatajournalism.eu/es/cp_data_news/tensiones-en-el-mediterraneo-oriental/ On the one hand, there is the Cyprus–Egypt–European Union alliance, which has agreed upon and mutually recognized the maritime boundaries corresponding to each of them in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, while clearly omitting the possible sovereignty claims of other countries in the disputed area (s.autor, 2024). On the other hand, there are Turkey’s individual efforts, which, in its quest to gain access to hydrocarbon resources in the sea in question, signed a Memorandum of Understanding in November 2019 with Libya’s Government of National Accord (GNA) to establish an EEZ stretching from Turkey’s southern coast to the northwestern area of the North African country. This agreement granted the Turks rights to hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation in the zone (s.autor, 2024). Although the agreement was suspended in 2021, Turkey has continued to promote ongoing exploration expeditions in the region, which have even extended to Somali waters, with whom it already has agreements in this field. The firm actions taken by states in the region demonstrate that, beyond being an ambition for access to energy resources in the Eastern Mediterranean, the dispute actually represents an active risk to stability and security in the region. Firstly, from the energy dimension: given the importance of energy resources for human development, the continuation of hostilities among the involved states prevents the establishment of cooperative mechanisms that would allow all parties to benefit from the issue. Instead, it risks generating a zero-sum game in which only the strongest state would emerge victorious while the others remain vulnerable to an imminent energy crisis, thereby putting thousands of human lives at risk. Secondly, from the military dimension, there is the latent possibility that an armed conflict could erupt at any moment in the Eastern Mediterranean over immediate access to the contested resources. Without underestimating the military capabilities of the other countries involved, it is important to highlight the case of Turkey, which in recent years has significantly expanded its military capacities as part of the reformulation of its Foreign Policy. This has allowed Turkey to position itself as the ninth-strongest military power in the world (Global Fire Power, 2025) and the second-largest army within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). On the opposite side lies Cyprus, which, although it does not possess the same military capabilities as the Republic of Turkey, does benefit from the direct support of the European Union, which, if necessary, could easily respond to potential acts of aggression in a military conflict in the region. Both sides of the dispute—Turkey and the European Union along with Cyprus—truly have sufficient resources to escalate the conflict if they so desire, but they have not done so for reasons that remain unclear. For now, the situation remains uncertain. Beyond warnings or complaints from some states and/or international organizations, there has been no decisive action to put an immediate end to the conflict, since, in reality, no large-scale crisis has yet warranted such a response. However, it is important not to underestimate the phenomenon: the fact that it has not yet generated a major impact does not mean it could not do so one day, especially considering the great capacities the involved states have both to act and to respond to possible aggression. Historically, disputes over energy resources have generated unprecedented wars that have cost thousands of lives—for example, the Gulf War in 1991. It is therefore necessary to continue monitoring such situations to prevent them from escalating into conflicts as violent as those of the past. Thus, diplomatic channels between all parties to the conflict must be pursued, with the aim of generating cooperative solutions that foster peace and prosperity among nations, rather than new problems. ReferencesDenizeau, A. (abril, 2021) “Mavi Vatan, the ‘Blue Homeland’: The Origins, Influences and Limits of an Ambitious Doctrine for Turkey”, Études de l’Ifri, Ifri.E. (2019, 30 diciembre) La lucha por los recursos en el Mediterráneo Oriental. Anadolu Ajansi. https://www.aa.com.tr/es/mundo/la-lucha-por-los-recursos-en-el-mediterr%C3%A1neo-oriental-/1685950Global Fire Power (2025). 2025 Military Strength Ranking. https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.phpJager, J.; Norris, A. (2021, 27 septiembre). The Mavi Vatan Doctrine and Blue Homeland Anthem: A Look At Turkey’s Maritime Worldview. Center for International Maritime Security. https://cimsec.org/the-mavi-vatan-doctrine-and-blue-homeland-anthem-a-look-at-turkeys-maritime-worldview/Kaya Ulger, I. (2020, 14 octubre) Turquía continúa defendiendo su “patria azul”. Anadolu Ajansi. https://www.aa.com.tr/es/mundo/turqu%C3%ADa-contin%C3%BAa-defendiendo-su-patria-azul-/2005458Mason, S. (2020, 20 septiembre). Blue Homeland: The Heated Politics Behind Turkey’s New Maritime Strategy - War on the Rocks. War On The Rocks. https://warontherocks.com/2020/06/blue-homeland-the-heated-politics-behind-turkeys-new-maritime-strategy/Martín, L. (s. f.).   ‘Mavi Vatam’: la doctrina turca de la ‘patria azul‘. Global Affairs and Strategic Studies. https://www.unav.edu/web/global-affairs/detalle/-/blogs/-mavi-vatam-la-doctrina-turca-de-la-patria-azul-3Menjón, D. M. (2021, 7 octubre). Dossier Geopolítico Especial: Teoría de la “Patria Azul”. Turquía se proyecta sobre el mar (de la energía). Hermes Kalamos. https://www.hermes-kalamos.eu/dossier-geopolitico-especial-teoria-de-la-patria-azul-turquia-se-proyecta-sobre-el-mar-de-la-energia/S. a. (2024, 10 abril) Cihat Yayci: Libia es un socio estratégico y un aliado para proteger y promover la seguridad de Turquía. OtraLecturA https://otralectura.com/2024/03/15/cihat-yayci-libia-es-un-socio-estrategico-y-un-aliado-para-proteger-y-promover-la-seguridad-de-turquia/S.a. (s. f.). Mavi Vatan-2019 Tatbikatının Ardından Enerji-Politik Ağırlıklı Bir Değerlendirme. Euronewsport İş dünyasından haberler. https://euronewsport.com/mavi-vatan-2019-tatbikatinin-ardindan-enerji-politik-agirlikli-bir-degerlendirme/Zeballos Rivero, M. (2023, 22 marzo). Creciente tensión entre Turquía y Grecia por reservas de gas en el Mediterráneo. Global Affairs And Strategic Studies. https://www.unav.edu/web/global-affairs/creciente-tension-entre-turquia-y-grecia-por-reservas-de-gas-en-el-mediterraneo 

Defense & Security
Bricked wall with stop terrorism sign

Causes of women involement in terrorism

by Eraj Farooqui

AbstractThis paper explores the complex factors that contribute to women's participation in terrorism, a subject that has attracted more scholarly interest, particularly in the wake of 9/11. The discipline is nonetheless politicised and divided despite a great deal of study, which is frequently made worse by a lack of primary data. Women, who are typically thought of as quiet and non-violent, have taken on important roles in terrorist groups, especially during the 1990s, where they have participated in high-profile attacks and leadership roles. The study identifies the main factors: political, religious, personal, and gender equality—that motivate women's participation. Examples show how different organisations differ in that some encourage women to participate actively, while others limit their positions. The study also examines how terrorism has changed over time, with a particular emphasis on its gendered aspects, and assesses how contemporary organisations such as the Islamic State have reshaped the roles of women in terrorist networks. Finally, by illuminating the ideological, cultural, and societal factors that lead to women's radicalisation and involvement, this research offers an in-depth examination of the relationship between gender and terrorism.Keywords:  Terrorism , Women , Political , Religion , Personal , Gender-equality Introduction The reasons behind female terrorism have been extensively studied and debated by numerous academics. Even though there is a wealth of study, a substantial portion of it is contradictory or incomplete. Frequently, the highly politicised word of terrorism has led to contradictory claims in the research. To understand why individuals resort to women terrorism, scholars highlight political, religious, social, and personal causes. In our culture, women were seen as housewives and peaceful members of society, and terrorist groups were controlled by men. Research on women and terrorism can be done on a variety of subjects; however, this paper will mostly focus on the causes of why women participate in terrorism. After 9/11 the academic research on scholarly papers on terrorism have increased by 300% since 9/11.[1] The connection between terrorism and gender is often overlooked due to governments' reluctance to reveal the primary causes and the reluctance to provide reliable data. Researchers often avoid original sources for security reasons. A 2009 review by Karen Jacques and Paul J. Taylor found a reluctance to describe events, excessive narrative analysis, and reliance on secondary sources. [2] The word "terror" comes from the Latin verb "terrere" which means to frighten. It was originally used by the Romans in 105 B.C. to characterise the terror that engulfed Rome during the attack by the Cibri tribe. During the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, Maximilien Robespierre incited fear among the people.[3]The word "terrorist" was used by Edmund Burkey in the Regicide Peace letter. With the end of Reign of Terror, the word ‘terrorism’ gained popularity.[4] Terrorism, a deliberate use of force or intimidation, is a significant issue in the 21st century, often driven by ideological, religious, or political factors. However, the term "terrorism" has no widely recognised definition. There are four distinct stages of modern terrorism. The first wave of terrorism began in Russia and spread to Western Europe and the United States, using revolutionary and anarchist beliefs.[5]  The final wave is founded on religious beliefs that the world is currently dealing with. This wave started in 1979 when Iran underwent an Islamic revolution. Because of gender norms, terrorists are frequently perceived as masculine attackers. Women are perceived as powerless, passive, and victims during times of conflict, but it is important to remember that if they participate in terrorism, they may pose a greater threat than men.[6]And since 1990, women have gained prominence in terrorist organisations, assuming leadership positions and taking part in more brutal assaults. More media attention is given to female attackers, and people are more curious about the motivations behind their actions. Additionally, terrorist organisations are recruiting more women as a result of this. Although they have historically been involved in terrorist organisations, women's numbers have been small. As an example, the number of female suicide attackers has surged from eight in the 1980s to well over 100 since 2000, indicating a growth in the involvement of women in terrorist actions.[7]  On the other hand as per Bloom’s report over 257 suicide attacks were carried out by female bombers between 1985 and 2010, accounting for 25% of all terrorist incidents. Since 2002, the proportion of female bombers in several nations has surpassed 50%.[8]The first known incidence of female political violence happened in 1878, when Zasulich shot Fedor Trepov, the governor of Saint Petersburg. David Rapoport identified this as one of the four waves of modern terrorism.[9] Weinberg and Eubank claim that women have primarily assumed leadership positions in left-wing revolutionary bands while being assigned to inferior positions in right-wing organisations. They mostly perform supporting and auxiliary functions for numerous religious institutions. [10]Gender, Palestinian Women, and Terrorism: Women's Liberation or Oppression? was written by Anat Berko and Edna Erez. stated that during his questioning, he discovered that many Palestinian men did not approve of women participating in suicide bombings because they saw them as inferior to men.[11] After doing study with a local terrorist organisation, Jacques and Taylor chose 30 male and female suicide bombers. He finished by studying the fact that males prefer to join terrorist organisations for religious and nationalistic reasons, but female suicide terrorists are motivated by personal ones. Mia Bloom’s book the Bombshell: Women and Terrorism examines the motivations of women who participate in terrorism,[12] with an emphasis on relationships, respect, revenge, and redemption. According to Vetter and Perlstein, one of the reasons why women join terrorist organisations is because of gender equality. However, Jacques and Taylor disagree with this notion.[13]The main reason women join the LTTE is to fight for gender equality; they participate in every aspect of the group and do so to avoid being discriminated against and repressed by the male-dominated society.  The following studies will provide an academic perspective on the causes of women's involvement in terrorism. The main focus will be on four causes: political, religious, personal, and gender equality, as well as a list of important terror occurrences conducted by female terrorists as a result of some key ideological beliefs. Religious Cause: Religious convictions have been the foundation of many terrorist organisations throughout history. The Crusaders can be categorised as a terrorist group. Although the Crusaders' main objective was to propagate Christianity, they also committed heinous acts of terrorism. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was the fourth wave of contemporary terrorism, and David Rapport claims that it was the first instance of religious terrorism in the modern era. Religious terrorism's core principle is the promotion of violence in the name of furthering religious beliefs. For example, Al-Qaeda and ISIS promote an Islamic caliphate globally.[14] However, attempting to do so by using cruel and aggressive methods. Islam and terrorism have become more associated since 9/11, as terrorist organisations have posed a serious threat to Western ideologies and societal influences.[15] Gonzalez-Perez notes that suicide bombers frequently use the idea of martyrdom and benefits in the afterlife to lure people into justifying their acts.[16] Women are also part of religious terrorist organisations but there are two argument over women involvement in jihadi group. As explaind by Muhammad Khayr Haykal in his book Al-Jihad wa al-qital fi al-siyasah al-shar'iyyah. 1. Women were seen as having a responsibility in raising money for Jihadis, caring for children, and providing medical treatment.[17] 2.    The Islamic state should set up training facilities for women to learn how to wield weapons and combat techniques, according to Islamic legal expert Muhammad Khayr Haykal. According to him, all Muslims should be held accountable for jihad if it turns into fard ‘ayn, and women must be prepared for this possibility in order to perform their duty. This strategy permits the practice of female jihadism in martyrdom missions and on the battlefield.[18] Role of women in Al-Qaeda According to Robet Pape in his book Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.[19]Highlights that male terrorists affiliated with Al-Qaeda oppose women's participation in terrorism. However the Tamil Tigers used twenty-three female attackers, the Palestinians used six, the Lebanese used six, the Chechens used fourteen, and the PKK used ten. Consequently, he concluded that Islamic fundamentalists oppose female fighters.[20] However, after the rise of the Islamic state, which encourages women to join their organisation and accept arms, the Pape argument is no longer regarded as legitimate. For example, some 200 women joined the Islamic State in Syria in 2014 after migrating from Western nations. Additionally, they more than doubled their numbers in 2015, reaching over 550 women.[21] This suggests that the Islamic State may assign women a direct role, such as suicide bombing, in a way that is different from that of many other jihadist organisations, such as the Taliban and Al Qaeda.  In Al-Qaeda the women played a secondary role for.e.g: Al Qaeda also benefited strategically from the assistance that women provided. For instance, the female terrorists of Al Qaeda were strongly using the internet to try to convince men to join the worldwide Jihad. Some males are inclined to join these groups because they feel ashamed of their masculinity as a result of these communication strategies.[22]Women's roles in jihadist organisations are valued in that they bear children and raise them to be potential recruits for terrorist organisations. Usama Bin Laden thanked women by saying: "You have inspired and encouraged [men] to join jihad, and you have raised all the men who fought in Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Chechnya, and you are the ones who produced the squadron of heroic men who carried out the raids in New York and Washington."[23] On the other hand Ayman al-Zawahiri's wife, Umayma al-Zawahiri, also urged her "Muslim sisters" to raise their kids on the love of jihad in God's way and "to induce their brothers, husbands, and sons to protect Muslims' lands and properties. To support (male) jihadists with prayers and financial support. [24] Al Khansa'a was one of the authors of the online magazine that inspired Muslim sisters with her articles; while she did not advocate for women to fight in combat, she did counsel them to stay in shape and exercise so they would be prepared for jihad.[25] Al-Qaeda Iraq's founder and Al-Qaeda member Abu Musab al Zarqawi urged Iraqi women to join the military. In Talafa, Iraq, a US military recruiting centre was the target of the first female suicide bomber. According to the announcement made by al Qaeda in Iraq on its website, "A blessed sister carried out a brave strike defending her beliefs. May God include our sister among the group of martyrs.’’[26]According to Mia Bloom the attack was carried out under the alias "ghost group" because it was still forbidden for Al Qaeda Central to collaborate with women on suicide bombings.[27] The identities of male suicide bombers are mentioned by AQI members, but the names of female suicide bombers are never mentioned. As a result, it is challenging to determine the purpose or driving force for their membership in terrorist organisations. Despite the lack of data regarding female suicide bombers, certain enquiries and interviews provide us with comparable reasons why they chose to join AQI as female terrorists. After losing a loved one, women join terrorist organisations in order to kill the offender and get revenge for the deaths of their husbands and brothers. Furthermore, AQI members urged young females to die as martyrs, claiming that they would immediately enter heaven and be the prophet Muhammad's neighbours.[28] Al-Qaeda is therefore mostly a male organisation that discourages women from engaging in violent activities. Women's roles are limited to becoming teachers, fund-raisers, social media advocates, and moms of potential jihadists. Role of women in Islamic State(IS) Islamic State was founded in 1999. The Islamic State had the greatest number of foreign terrorist fighters in history, making it a unique terrorist organisation. About 41,490 foreign nationals from 8 nations joined the Islamic State with the goal of restoring the caliphate. Of the foreign terrorist fighters, about 4761 (13%) were female. Following Eastern Europe (44%), Western Europe (42%), the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand (36%), and other regions, Eastern Asia had the greatest percentage (70%) of women connected with the Islamic State.[29] The biggest motivation for joining an Islamic terrorist organisation is religion. Women typically played a supporting role in Islamic terrorist organisations prior to the rise of the Islamic State. However, the role of women in these organisations has grown stronger after the fall of Al-Qaeda and the rise of Islamic State in the Middle East. Muriel Dagauque, a Muslim woman who converted to Islam and was married to a Muslim man, was one of the Islamic State suicide bombers. She moved to Iraq with her spouse from Europe in order to become a martyr, and on November 9, 2005, she bombed herself.[30] Many jihadist suicide bombers are comforted by the assurance that they will be sitting next to God (Allah), experiencing only joy and no agony, before the first drop of their blood ever hits the earth.[31]Women joined the Islamic State mostly for religious reasons. Umm Layth, also known as Aqsa Mahmood, was a 21 year old Scottish university student who travelled to Syria to take part in Islamic State terrorist activities. Mahmood expressed her opinions on jihad with the following sentences.: "If not you, then your grandkids or their grandchildren. But do not worry, our cubs will eventually shed your blood. This Islamic dominion will become well-known and dreaded all over the world. Choose a side; this is a fight against Islam. You may either support them or support us.''[32] Role of women Chechnya Terrorism: Islam is the predominant religion in Chechnya, and Wahhabist terror ideology is linked to Chechen terrorism, particularly suicide terrorism.[33]The Wahhabi sect appears to have spread to the Chechen territories through other terror cells in the Middle East, such as al Qaeda.[34] This ideology which glorifies martyrdom and promotes jihad in order to establish a worldwide Muslim caliphate is a rationale for carrying out acts of retaliation and acting on behalf of a national separatist movement.[35] Chechen women, due to their Islamic influence, often wear black and traditional Muslim clothing, such as a head scarf or jilbab, which allows them to conceal weapons and bombs, as seen in the Dulbrov theatre incident.[36] Religion is one factor that contributes to women joining terrorist organisations, but it is not the only one; other factors also play a role. Political Cause According to Gus Martin, terrorism can occur under a variety of circumstances when there is political repression. First, the group is resentful of the injustices they perceive in society. The group also believes that their social dissent is insignificant. Last but not least, the group believes that there are problems with the system that can be fixed, which leads them to confront the conflict.[37] Despite the widespread belief that women do not participate in political violence, women have been planning attacks and taking part in political violence since 1800.[38] Violence is a tactic used by women who are dissatisfied with the government, have their opinions ignored, and are under-represented in organisational structures With anarchist and revolutionary beliefs, anarchism was the beginning point of the first wave of contemporary terrorism, which swept from Western Europe to America. Nonetheless, women's political motive persisted until the second wave of terrorism, when nationalism emerged as the primary driver of women's participation in terrorism.[39] However, they were only allowed to serve as scouts and messengers during the second wave of terrorism. David Rapoport claims that because women once again assumed leadership roles, there are some similarities between the first and second waves.[40] Vera Zasulich shot the governor of St. Petersburg; she said that she had a political purpose for doing so because the governor was well-known for his Polish insurrection and had ordered to execute political prisoner Arkhip Bogolyubov. This infuriated the revolutionary forces, and six people made the decision to kill the governor, but Zasulich was the first to take the initiative. This was the beginning of the first wave of terrorism. Despite the fact that women participated in political violence, her case is notable as the first instance of female political violence in the modern era or the first to be acknowledged. [41] Russian university students founded the group, which specifically targeted political figures. Vera Figner and Gesia Gelfman, Sofia Perovskaya, and three ladies from Narodnaya Volya had a key role in the March 13, 1881, assassination of Russian Emperor Alexander II in St. Petersburg.[42] The reason behind this act was that Tsar Alexander II released his renowned Emancipation Manifesto in 1861 after the Russian intellectuals struggled to achieve their demands. This was intended to end the peasantry's enslavement and, if feasible, bring about a new, more liberal era. Perovskaya and other disappointed reformers decided to accelerate change as it became evident that this new age was a false dawn. As a result, hundreds of revolutionaries left St Petersburg in 1874 to tour the Russian countryside and read pamphlets to the peasants about socialism, nihilism, and anarchism in an attempt to educate them for the day when they would destroy the Tsar.[43] In 1954 the Algerian muslim formed a group called National Liberation Front. Their major goal was to achieve independence from the colonial power France. FLN rose to prominence thanks to its female members, Zohra Drif, Dajmila Bouhard, and Samia Lakhdar. They were able to cross the French checkpoint and leave bombs in various locations, and as a result, three people died in an explosion on September 3, 1956, and several others were injured.[44]This movement occurred at the time of second wave of contemporary terrorism which was based on the idea of nationalism and anticolonialism. As per reports between 1970 and 1984, 451 Italian women joined terrorist organisations and then engaged in political violence. The bulk of these women had degrees and performed identical duties to those of male terrorists, they found, with 35% of them being students, 23% being clerks, secretaries, nurses, technicians, and 20% being instructors. A paramilitary group called Red Brigade was established in 1970 and was engaged in terrorist activities around the nation. Because it supported Italy's withdrawal from NATO and dominated the Marixist-Leninist worldview. Known for its kidnapping and murderous activities, Red Brigades also killed former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro and abducted James L. Dozier, a senior US officer at NATO. Barbara Balzerian had murdered him. Many female members of the Red Brigades participated in the group's violent assaults, and Margherita Cagol (Mara), one of the Red Brigade's co-founders and one of the first victim in an armed conflict with the police, became a symbol of the left-wing movement.[45]The most violent communist organisation throughout the 1970s and 1980s was the Red Army Faction which engaged in ideologically motivated terrorism in West Germany. Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin, co-founders, protested consumerism by burning a department store in Frankfurt in 1968.[46] A major problem is the Chechen people's desire for independence from Russia, which is driven by their nationalist and separatist beliefs. In the lengthy history of the Chechen Republic, Russians, have been the target of several violent attacks. Since June 7, 2000, Khava Barayeva and Luisa Magomadova stormed the temporary headquarters of an elite OMON (Russian Special Forces) squad in Alkhan Yurt, Chechnya, sparking the start of Chechnya's "Black Widows" movement. With two fatalities and five injuries, the incident brought attention to the group's notorious actions.[47]According to the report, women were responsible for 47% of all terrorist incidents and 81% of suicide attacks in the Chechen region between 2000 and 2005.[48] For more than 30 years, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) battled the Sri Lankan central government, mostly because of the Tamil minority's ethnic oppression. Their goal was to establish their own nation in Sri Lanka's north and east.[49] The use of female suicide bombers and the LTTE's high proportion of female members were well-known. The proportion of female LTTE members varied between 20 and 30 percent, with some estimates reaching as high as 50 percent in certain years.[50]According to LTTE theorist Anton Balasingham's wife, Adele Ann, a Tamil woman's decision to join the group was a sign to society that she was dissatisfied with the status quo and had the ability to rebel against authority.[51]To sum up, female revolutionaries have contested the idea that they are less capable of committing acts of terrorism or have less political clout, and. Additionally, nationalism and revolution are the main goals of the majority of terrorist organisations that are focused on women. Personal reason Personal causes, such as revenge, family instability, rape, personal tragedy, and revenge, are important motivations for the individual to join terrorism. Women are more likely to cite these as their original motivation in joining terrorist organizations than men. Mia Bloom, Jaques and Taylor, and Robert Pape have all proposed that the reasons behind female terrorists are different from those of male terrorists. According to them, the emotions of female terrorists such as family problems, discontent, and the desire to commit suicide are what motivate them. These motivations are further divided by Bloom into four categories: respect, relationship, revenge, and redemption. [52] 1. Women who experience sexual assault, including rape, may retaliate violently; some may even choose suicide bombing as a last resort. After women were raped in Iraq, Samira Ahmad Jassim, dubbed the "mother" of suicide bombers, was accused of encouraging rape victims to commit honour suicide and conducting 28 suicide attacks, according to the Die Welt article..[53] 2. During the Chechen War, Russian soldiers sexually assaulted many Chechen women. According to estimates from Doctors Without Borders, 85 percent of Chechen women experienced sexual assault at the hands of law enforcement and military during the Chechen War. Journalist Svetlana Makunina claims that after being drugged and raped, Chechen women were left with no choice but to commit suicide bombing.On the evening of May 21, 1991, LTTE suicide bomber Dhanu killed former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi at an election rally in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu. She clarified that she took this action after being gang-raped by Indian peacekeeping troops. 3. Another crucial element that encourages women to join terrorist groups is relationships. Family members and relatives, who are important in the recruitment process, could function as a conduit between the terror group and women. Sidney Jones claims that while some women freely choose to wed male terrorists, others are coerced by their relatives.[54] Many women join ISIS for a variety of reasons, including a desire to contribute to the caliphate, a desire for friendship with like-minded individuals, or direct pressure by family members and acquaintances.[55] For e.g., Shamima Begum was influenced by her friend Sharmena to join IS. Barbara Victor, Army of Roses: Inside the World of Palestinian Women Suicide Bombers stated that instead of acting on their own initiative, female Palestinian suicide bombers are “at the mercy of, or in love with, their handlers.”[56] (women join terrorist organisations because they are forced by male) 4. Guillermo Galdos, and “Eliana Gonzales,” points out that male influence is not an essential prerequisite for recruiting women into violent organizations. In order to join revolutionary movements, women have reported willingly leaving their boyfriends, husbands, and kids. The oldest woman in Columbia's Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), Eliana Gonzales Acosta, for instance, abandoned her husband, sister, and daughter to join the group.[57] 5. Many people who have been directly impacted by the acts of another group resort to terrorism. The revenge theory is the name given to this. An individual is more inclined to engage in terrorism if they have lost a friend or loved one to a terrorist organisation or the military.[58] Additionally, according to Jacques and Taylor, revenge influences people's decision to join terrorist groups.[59] In literature and art, the stereotype that women are more revengeful than males is mirrored. According to William Cosgrove's The Mourning Bride, "Heaven is furious, like love turned to hate, and Hell is furious, like a woman scorned.”[60]Russian negotiator suggests the difference between men and women is that “[Chechen women] are ‘zombified’ by their own sorrow and grief.[61] The Russian and international press called Chechen women bombers "Black Widows" as it was revealed that many were acting in retribution for the deaths of their husbands, kids, and brothers.[62]Since the takeover of the Dubrovka Theatre in October 2002, nineteen female bombers have appeared in black mourning garments with bombs attached to their bodies. They held 850 people hostage for two and a half days. Until Russian forces imposed persecution on the people and executed the terrorist. While these motivations were not limited to revenge or family difficulties, they were also gender specific. There are more men killed in these battles, resulting in an imbalance of women battling for retribution. Furthermore, women constitute the majority of rape victims in these communities, which motivates them to join. Gender Equality: According to Vetter and Perlstein, one of the reasons why women join terrorist organisations is because of gender equality. However, Jacques and Taylor disagree with this notion.[63]FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, was established to combat societal inequality and provide women with opportunities for advancement. Despite being predominantly dominated by women, the organization offers women's rights, sexual freedom, and opportunities for advancement in a patriarchal society.[64] FARC recruits in rural areas, where women often have fewer opportunities, highlighting the organization's societal focus on women's rights.[65]A woman who had spent many years of her life in the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia—Ejército del Pueblo, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People's Army) was interviewed by Anne Phillips in 2012.[66]For the numerous reasons mentioned above, this woman, code-named "Athena," joined the FARC before turning thirteen. She explains why she joined this group  as it provides gender equality. She had economic reasons because she was from a rural area and lacked access to economic and educational opportunities. Women in Colombia's rural communities face a lack of opportunities, which leads to prostitution. Many women turn to the FARC as a viable alternative to prostitution. The FARC gives women a stable income. Women turn to the FARC because they are guaranteed food and other requirements. They are given the same opportunities as males and are able to support themselves. Also, by women joining terrorist organizations they are challenging gender stereotypes in their societies. O’Rourke says that women dislike these gender norms and rise out against them in opposition of the stereotyped female in their culture.[67]The LTTE gives women the same incentive to advance gender equality. According to LTTE women, they felt liberated and empowered within the organisation. By establishing sexual limitations and providing equal training chances, the LTTE established an environment that was equal for men and women. Women held leadership roles inside the LTTE and believed they were on par with the men themselves. Often, women join these groups to either learn about or escape gender inequality. CONCLUSION: The primary goal of this article was to examine the primary motivator for women to join terrorist organisations. For more than a century, women have been participating in terrorist activities, but only in recent decades have studies of terrorism examined female terrorists. Political, religious, personal, and gender equality are some of the motivations for women to join terrorist groups and participate in liberation movements. Since the 19th century, women have joined a variety of terrorist organisations; some conduct these horrible deeds to defend their beliefs or territory. Religion is another reason these women wish to sacrifice themselves in the name of Islam. They act in this way because they believe that, despite their crimes, they will be admitted to heaven if they commit murder for Islam. Women's terrorist operations might occasionally be motivated by personal issues. Although forced marriage, family issues, rape, the death of a loved one, and defiance of the patriarchal society are some of the main causes, other traumas could also influence their choices. However, each of the four factors has a major impact on women's decision to participate in terrorism. Al-Qaeda and Islamic State, for example, are heavily influenced by religion. The Tamil Tigers and FARC, on the other hand, are primarily driven by personal motives and gender equality. Furthermore, the political cause of Red Brigade and the National Liberation Front has been their main source of motivation. "Personal, political, and religious motivations are the main cause behind women's involvement in terrorism," claim Cunningham and Bloom. In order to curb terrorists' actions in the modern world, it is critical to comprehend their objectives and the reason behind their organisation. Furthermore, since many highly educated women have joined terrorist organisations, we cannot claim that education may have a major influence. There is extremely little research on gender and terrorism, particularly on women's participation in terrorist actions. To determine the primary reason women, participate in terrorism, we must conduct additional research in this field. Due to the fact that the information offered is highly generalised. What steps should the government take to prevent women from joining terrorist organisations? What other variables might encourage women to join terrorist organisations? Researchers from all social science fields should conduct some research on these pressing concerns as political scientists alone are unable to provide these answers. Bibliography[1] Jessica Shepherd, “The Rise and Rise of Terrorism Studies,” last modified July 3, 2007, accessed December 10, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/education/2007/jul/03/highereducation.research.[2] Jessica Shepherd, “The Rise and Rise of Terrorism Studies,” last modified July 3, 2007, accessed December 10, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/education/2007/jul/03/highereducation.research.[3] Ariel Merari, Driven to Death: Psychological and Social Aspects of Suicide Terrorism, 1st ed. (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 2010).[4]Zeynep Bayar, “The Role of Women in Terrorism,” City University of New York (CUNY) , accessed December 15, 2024, https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4346&context=gc_etds.[5] David Rapoport, The Four Waves of Modern Terrorism (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004), 46–73.[6] “Women and Terrorist Radicalization Final Report,” Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, January 1, 2013), last modified January 1, 2013, accessed December 13, 2024, https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/4/a/99919.pdf.[7] LindseyA O’Rourke, “What’s Special about Female Suicide Terrorism?,” Security Studies 18, no. 4 (December 2, 2009): 682.[8] Mia Bloom, “What’s Special about Female Suicide Terrorism,” Gender Studies 28, no. 1–2 (June 1, 2011): 682.[9] David Rapopart, The Four Waves of Modern Terrorism (Washington DC: Georgetown University, 2004).[10] Leonard Weinberg and William L Eubank, “Women’s Involvement in Terrorism,” Gender Studies 28, no. 2 (June 2011): 22–49.[11] Anat Berko, “Gender Palestinian Women, and Terrorism: Women’s Liberation or Oppression?,” ed. Edna Erez, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 30, no. 6 (April 27, 2007): 493–519.[12] Mia Bloom, Bombshell: Women and Terrorism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).[13] Karen Jacques and Paul J. Taylor, “Male and Female Suicide Bombers: Different Sexes, Different Reasons?,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 31, no. 4 (April 10, 2008).[14] Rosemarie Skaine , Female Suicide Bombers (United Kingdom: McFarland, 2006).[15] Graham Bird, Brock Blomberg, and Gregory Hess, “International Terrorism: Causes, Consequences and Cures,” World Economy 31 (2008): 259.[16] Rosemarie Skaine , Female Suicide Bombers (United Kingdom: McFarland, 2006), 12.[17] Ibn al Bukhari, Sahih Al- Bukhari. Trans Muhammad Muhsin Khan (United States: Islamic University, 1979).[18] Muhammad Khayr Haykal, Jihad and Fighting according to the Shar‘ia Policy (Beirut: Dar al-Barayiq, 1993).[19] Robert A. Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terror (NewYork: Random House Books, 2005).[20] Rosemarie Skaine , Female Suicide Bombers (United Kingdom: McFarland, 2006).[21] Erin Marie Saltman and Melanie Smith, Till Martyrdom Do Us Part’: Gender and the ISIS Phenomenon (Institute for Strategic Dialogue, May 22, 2015).[22] Zeynep Bayar, “The Role of Women in Terrorism,” City University of New York (CUNY) , accessed December 15, 2024, https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4346&context=gc_etds.[23] Nelly Lahoud, “The Neglected Sex: The Jihadis’ Exclusion of Women from Jihad,” Terrorism and Political Violence 26, no. 5 (February 20, 2014).[24] Nelly Lahoud, “Umayma Al-Zawahiri on Women’s Role in Jihad,” Jihadica, last modified February 26, 2010, https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1422&context=honors201019.[25] Mia Bloom, “What’s Special about Female Suicide Terrorism,” Gender Studies 28, no. 1–2 (June 1, 2011).[26] “Woman Suicide Bomber Strikes Iraq,” BB, last modified September 28, 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4289168.stm. [27]Ibid[28] Aqeel Hussein and Damien McElroy, “Mother of All Suicide Bombers’ Warns of Rise in Attacks,” The Telegraph, last modified November 15, 2008, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/3464411/Mother-of-all-suicide-bombers-warns-of-rise-in-attacks.html.[29] Joana Cook and Gina Vale, From Daesh to “Diaspora”: Tracing the Women and Minors of Islamic State (International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, 2018).[30] Zeynep Bayar, “The Role of Women in Terrorism,” City University of New York (CUNY) , accessed December 15, 2024, https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4346&context=gc_etds.[31] Mia Bloom, Bombshell: Women and Terrorism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).[32] Susan Swarbrick, “Scots ‘Jihadi Bride’ Talks of ‘Revenge’ in Hate-Filled Blog,” The Herald, last modified July 6, 2015, https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13415875.scots-jihadi-bride-talks-of-revenge-in-hate-filled-blog/.[33] W. Andy Knight and Tanya Narozhna, “Social Contagion and the Female Face of Terror: New Trends in the Culture of Political Violence,” Canadian Foreign Policy Journal 12, no. 1 (March 14, 2011).[34] Ibid.,33[35] Ibid.,33[36] LindseyA O’Rourke, “What’s Special about Female Suicide Terrorism?,” Security Studies 18, no. 4 (December 2, 2009): 690.[37] Gus Martin , Understanding Terrorism: Challenges, Perspectives, and Issues , 8th ed. (SAGE Publications, Inc, 2024), 60.[38] Maha Butt, “Feminist IR Theory and Terrorism,” International Affairs Forum, accessed December 16, 2024, https://www.ia-forum.org/Content/ViewInternal_Document.cfm?contenttype_id=0&ContentID=9152#:~:text=Analyzing%20terrorism%20from%20a%20feminist's,female%20terrorists%20as%20'women%20terrorists..[39] David Rapoport, The Four Waves of Modern Terrorism (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004), 46–73.[40] Elena Gapova, “Gender Equality vs. Difference and What Post-Socialism Can Teach Us,” Womens Studies International Forum 59 (November 1, 2016).[41] “Vera Zasulich,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Zasulich#cite_note-5.[42]Elena Gapova, “Gender Equality vs. Difference and What Post-Socialism Can Teach Us,” Womens Studies International Forum 59 (November 1, 2016).[43] James Crossland, “The Women Who Ended an Emperor,” History Workshop, last modified April 21, 2021, https://www.mybib.com/#/projects/39m8D0/citations/new/webpage.[44] Zeynep Bayar, “The Role of Women in Terrorism,” City University of New York (CUNY) , accessed December 15, 2024, https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4346&context=gc_etds.[45] Ruth Glynn , Approaching Women, Terror, and Trauma in Cultural Perspective, 2013.[46] “Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof,” Encyclopedia.com, accessed January 2, 2025, https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/andreas-baader-and-ulrike-meinhof.[47] Anne Speckhard and Khapta Akhmedova, “Black Widows: The Chechen Female Suicide Terrorists,” The Institute for National Security Studies, last modified August 2006, https://www.inss.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Female-Suicide-Bombers-63-80.pdf.[48] Anne Speckhard and Khapta Ahkmedova, “The Making of a Martyr: Chechen Suicide Terrorism,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 29, no. 5 (September 22, 2006).[49]Peng Wang, “Women in the LTTE: Birds of Freedom or Cogs in the Wheel?,” Journal of Politics and Law 4, no. 1 (2011).[50] Karla J. Cunningham, “Cross-Regional Trends in Female Terrorism,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 26, no. 3 (May 2003).[51]“Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE),” South Asia Terrorism Portal, https://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/srilanka/terroristoutfits/ltte.htm.[52] Karen Jacques and Paul J. Taylor, “Male and Female Suicide Bombers: Different Sexes, Different Reasons?,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 31, no. 4 (2008).[53]Mia Bloom, “What’s Special about Female Suicide Terrorism,” Gender Studies 28, no. 1–2 (June 1, 2011).[54] Sidney Jones, “Inherited Jihadism: Like Father, like Son,” International Crisis Group, last modified July 4, 2007, https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-east-asia/indonesia/inherited-jihadism-father-son.[55] Daniel Milton and Brian Dodwell, “Jihadi Brides? Examining a Female Guesthouse Registry from the Islamic State’s Caliphate,” Combating Terrorism Center 11, no. 5 (May 2018).[56]Edward E. Azar, “Protracted International Conflicts: Ten Propositions,” International Interaction 12, no. 1 (January 9, 2008).[57]“GENDER and TERRORISM: MOTIVATIONS of FEMALE TERRORISTS ,” DNI.gov, https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/FOIA/DF-2023-00139-Gender_and_Terrorism_Thesis.pdf.[58]LindseyA O’Rourke, “What’s Special about Female Suicide Terrorism?,” Security Studies 18, no. 4 (December 2, 2009): 710.[59]Karen Jacques and Paul J. Taylor, “Male and Female Suicide Bombers: Different Sexes, Different Reasons?,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 31, no. 4 (2008): 322[60] “GENDER and TERRORISM: MOTIVATIONS of FEMALE TERRORISTS ,” DNI.gov, https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/FOIA/DF-2023-00139-Gender_and_Terrorism_Thesis.pdf.[61]Ibid.,63[62] Anne Speckhard and Khapta Ahkmedova, “The Making of a Martyr: Chechen Suicide Terrorism,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 29, no. 5 (September 22, 2006).[63]Karen Jacques and Paul J. Taylor, “Male and Female Suicide Bombers: Different Sexes, Different Reasons?,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 31, no. 4 (2008).[64]Natalia Herrera and Douglas Porch, “‘Like Going to a Fiesta’ – the Role of Female Fighters in Colombia’s FARC-EP,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 19, no. 4 (January 26, 2009).[65]Mia Kazman, “Women of the FARC,” William J.Perry Center, accessed December 23, 2024, https://wjpcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Women-of-the-FARC.pdf[66]Christine Balling, “Why Women Turn to the FARC -- and How the FARC Turns on Them,” Foreign Affairs, last modified June 1, 2012, accessed December 23, 2024, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/colombia/2012-06-01/fighting-mad.[67]LindseyA O’Rourke, “What’s Special about Female Suicide Terrorism?,” Security Studies 18, no. 4 (December 2, 2009): 702

Diplomacy
canada between Israel and Palestine.  Israel canada Palestine

Israel/Palestine and Canada’s Empty Support for International law

by Alex Neve

Abstract Canada has long maintained that international law must be central to resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. But has there been appropriate follow-through when international law has been violated? This policy brief examines Canada's positions and, importantly, actions, in the face of violations of international law by the Israeli government during its military offensive on Gaza following the 7 October 2023 attacks in southern Israel by Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups. The analysis makes it clear that Canada has rarely condemned those violations, let alone imposed sanctions or other consequences for them.Keywordshuman rights, Israel, Palestine, Gaza, Canada, Canadian foreign policy, international law, International Court of Justice, International Criminal Court, international humanitarian law Professed respect for international law “Israel has a right under international law to take the necessary measures, in accordance with human rights and international humanitarian law, to protect the security of its citizens from attacks by terrorist groups.” In many respects, this statement—taken from the section detailing “Support for Israel and its Security” in Global Affairs Canada's overview of “Canadian policy on key issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”1—captures what is right in principle, but so terribly wrong in practice, when it comes to Canada's foreign policy regarding Israel and Palestine. As it should be, international law is lifted up and given a spotlight. Canada's position is grounded in an expectation that international human rights and international humanitarian law will be respected. But what the statement does not convey is that there is rarely an appropriate response by the Canadian government when it becomes clear that actions taken by Israel—particularly the Israel Defense Forces—to protect the security of its citizens consistently amount to grave, widespread, and systematic violations of both international human rights and international humanitarian law. International law and human rights also feature prominently in other key elements of Canada's policy regarding the conflict. Canada recognizes the “Palestinian right to self-determination.” The rights of Palestinian refugees are to be respected, “in accordance with international law.” Canada notes that the “Fourth Geneva Convention applies in the occupied territories” and consequently that Israeli settlements are in violation of that convention, as is the Israeli government's construction of the barrier inside the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Failure to uphold international law This is all good, in principle. But how does Canada react to the fact that the Palestinian right to self-determination and the rights of Palestinian refugees have undeniably been abrogated for decades? And what is Canada's response to the defiant expansion of the Geneva Convention–violating settlements throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem? Rather than mount a robust defence (or any defence, for that matter) of the international legal principles at stake, Canada's policy more or less goes quiet at this point. There is no condemnation of the breaches of international law, and consideration of the possible implications under Canadian law is reluctant at best, with a bare minimum of legal, trade, or other consequences for these blatantly unlawful actions. The disconnect between rhetorical flourishes of support for the professed importance of international law but the failure and unwillingness to champion it when it is breached has, unfortunately but perhaps not surprisingly, dominated the key aspects of Canada's response to Israel's unrelenting assault on Gaza following the brutal attacks launched by Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups in southern Israel on 7 October 2023. It was evident from the outset. October 7th, Gaza, and Canada's empty resort to international law Reacting to the horror of the October 7th attack, Canada, like the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and many of its allies in Western Europe, almost immediately referenced the fact that Israel had a right to defend itself. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's first statement, on October 8th, noted that Canada “reaffirm[ed] its support for Israel's right to defend itself.”2 But what, as a matter of international law, did that actually mean? The question as to whether Israel as a nation has the right to defend itself from attack is dictated by Article 51 of the United Nations (UN) Charter, International Court of Justice (ICJ) jurisprudence, and other public international law sources. As Marko Milanovic, professor of public international law at the University of Reading School of Law notes, “[M]any who think there is a single, clearly correct answer to the question whether Israel has a right to self-defence do so simply because the answer fits their prior narratives and worldviews.” Milanovic lays out the complexity and uncertainty in considerable detail and concludes that “the jus ad bellum is indeterminate on the question of whether non-state actors, whose conduct is not attributable to a state, can commit armed attacks in the sense of Article 51 of the Charter.”3 With the threshold question of whether an attack carried out by an armed group such as Hamas constitutes an armed attack of the nature that would trigger application of Article 51 being at best indeterminate, so too is the question as to whether a right of self-defence arises. As such, the Canadian government's simple assertion, without any further expansion or discussion, is clearly not without debate. Offering no qualification or explanation alongside that assertion, on a matter that is unsettled and complex within international law, is problematic. Article 51 states: “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations[.]”4 What emerges from a review of applicable international law, however, are differing views as to whether, and to what extent, a nation's right under Article 51 to resort to armed force in response to an attack—in other words, to go to war as a means of self-defence—arises when the attack is carried out by another state, not when the perpetrator is a non-state actor or armed group such as Hamas or the other Palestinian armed groups responsible for the October 7th attacks, operating within territory that is controlled by the state concerned. That is reflected in the conclusion of the ICJ in its 2004 Advisory Opinion, Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory: Article 51 of the Charter thus recognizes the existence of an inherent right of self-defence in the case of armed attack by one State against another State. However, Israel does not claim that the attacks against it are imputable to a foreign State. The Court also notes that Israel exercises control in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and that, as Israel itself states, the threat which it regards as justifying the construction of the wall originates within, and not outside, that territory. The situation is thus different from that contemplated by Security Council resolutions 1368 (2001) and 1373 (200 l), and therefore Israel could not in any event invoke those resolutions in support of its claim to be exercising a right of self-defence. Consequently, the Court concludes that Article 51 of the Charter has no relevance in this case.5 Having determined that Article 51 was not relevant, the Court also went on to consider whether Israel could more broadly rely on the customary international legal principle of a “state of necessity” to justify construction of the wall. The Court agreed that Israel had “the right, and indeed the duty, to respond in order to protect the life of its citizens” but noted that “measures taken are bound nonetheless to remain in conformity with applicable international law.”6 This is essentially where Canada's stated policy lands as well. For example, the now former prime minister's October 8th statement, referenced above, goes on to qualify that Israel's right to defend itself must be exercised “in accordance with international law.” This, in turn, echoes the numerous references to the need to respect international law noted above, which are scattered throughout Canada's overall Israel/Palestine policy—established long before October 7th. The phrase “in accordance with international law” has been repeated consistently in written statements, social media posts, and press comments by the prime minister,7 the minister of foreign affairs,8 and other ministers9 at various stages of the current conflict. But we do not find any further explanation as to what that entails-for instance, that regardless of whether or not a right of self-defence to an armed attack exists in these circumstances and legally justifies Israel launching a war against Hamas, fundamental principles from international humanitarian law, such as the requirements of necessity and proportionality, nevertheless always apply. That failure to have clearly acknowledged the applicable international humanitarian law framework is particularly problematic, because the evidence that those legal obligations have been systematically and gravely violated, to the extent of undeniably constituting war crimes, has become incontrovertible. Yet as Israel's full-scale assault on Gaza was launched and expanded—and as reports from the UN,10 humanitarian agencies,11 international12 and national13 human rights organizations, local human rights monitors,14and journalists15 made it clear that massive human rights violations and breaches of international humanitarian law were occurring—nothing more was said. Canada did not move from stating that international law must be respected to stating the obvious—that it was well-established that this was not happening. The Canadian government refused to criticize Israel for breaches of international law, let alone press for accountability and consequences for the violations. Canada and the ICJ's Genocide Convention case Nowhere has this been more apparent, or more consequential, than in Canada's response to announcements and rulings from the two international courts that have a key role in upholding international law in situations such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court (ICC). Canada is often regarded as one of the world's most reliable champions of international courts. As such, its failure to show the expected support at this time has been widely noted with concern. The ICJ is actively engaged with the conflict through two separate cases. On 29 December 2023 South Africa launched proceedings16 against Israel, alleging violations of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) with respect to Israel's actions in Gaza. Given the gravity and urgency of the situation on the ground in Gaza, South Africa has applied to the Court on four separate occasions,17 seeking orders for interim provisional measures while the case proceeds. The Court consequently indicated a range of provisional measures in various orders18 issued between January and May 2024. The Court's provisional measures have been grounded in a finding that “at least some of the rights claimed by South Africa under the Genocide Convention and for which it was seeking protection were plausible, namely the right of the Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide and related prohibited acts mentioned in Article III, and the right of South Africa to seek Israel's compliance with the latter's obligations under that Convention.”19 The legal semantics of that ruling are nuanced, but nonetheless significant and with very real consequences. The Court has not reached any conclusion as to whether genocide has occurred in Gaza—or even whether it has possibly or potentially occurred—nor would it be expected to at this early stage of the case. But it is a clear statement that the Court considers the rights protected under the Genocide Convention to be plausibly pertinent to Israel's military operations in Gaza. Drawing on the Court's conclusion, many commentators,20 including legal experts and human rights organizations, now regularly reference plausible, potential, or prima facie genocide in Gaza. The Court's final ruling on whether Israel has in fact breached its obligations under the Genocide Convention is still some way off—likely late 2025, at the earliest. Among the provisional measures indicated by the Court to date are orders that Israel prevent the commission of all acts of genocide, prevent and punish incitement to genocide, enact immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance in Gaza, and immediately halt its military offensive and any other action in Rafah that may inflict on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about their physical destruction as a group, in whole or in part. Canada's response to the ICJ rulings has been, at worst, tepid and incoherent, and at best, only supportive when consistent with Canada's already established positions. Following the first provisional measures indicated by the Court in January, Canada's foreign affairs minister, Mélanie Joly, issued a statement expressing support for the ICJ's “critical role … in upholding the international rules-based order,” but stressed that this support did “not mean that [Canada accepted] the premise of the case brought by South Africa.”21 There was not a word from the Canadian government calling on Israel to comply with the Court's order, which is what would have been expected from a self-declared champion of the Court. The response four months later to the Court's provisional measures concerning Rafah was stronger. Prime Minister Trudeau reiterated what was by then Canada's established position, calling for “no more military operations in Rafah by Israel, and certainly no escalation of military operations in Rafah.” The prime minister also underscored that the “ICJ's proposals are binding and we expect everyone to follow them as a matter of international law.”22 However, as is well established, Israel did not comply with the Court's ruling with respect to Rafah, and Canada has issued no express condemnation, let alone imposed any consequences, for that disregard of international law. Canada and the ICJ's advisory opinion The second ICJ case dealing with Israel-Palestine is an advisory opinion requested in January 2023,23 following a December 2022 UN General Assembly resolution seeking the Court's views on the legal consequences of Israeli practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), including East Jerusalem. The Court's Advisory Opinion24 was issued on 19 July 2024. The Court was unequivocal in concluding that “the sustained abuse by Israel of its position as an occupying Power, through annexation and an assertion of permanent control over the Occupied Palestinian Territory and continued frustration of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, violates fundamental principles of international law and renders Israel's presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory unlawful.”25 Notably, the ICJ specifically addresses the question of the legal consequences of Israel's unlawful presence in the OPT for third states, which would obviously include Canada, and concludes that “all States are under an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. They are also under an obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel's illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”26 This leads to a consideration of Canada's stance before and after the ICJ Advisory Opinion. Canada filed a written submission27 seven months in advance of the hearing, arguing that the Court should use its discretion and decline the General Assembly's request to issue an advisory opinion. Canada also initially requested an opportunity to make oral submissions during the hearing, and was one of fifty-four states and multilateral organizations slated to do so.28 However, as the hearing got underway on 19 February 2024, Canada withdrew its request to make an oral presentation29 and chose to rely solely on the earlier written submission—namely, that the Court should decline to issue an advisory opinion. The explanation offered for withdrawing from the oral hearing was that the government's position had not changed from the time of making its written submission. Apparently, that position was unchanged even though external circumstances had changed dramatically. After all, Canada's position had been formulated seven months earlier—before the October 7th attack in Israel, the subsequent Israeli offensive in Gaza, and the 26 January 2024 ICJ ruling on provisional measures in the case brought by South Africa under the Genocide Convention. Canada's response after the Advisory Opinion was issued was certainly lacking. The immediate reaction was limited to a statement that the government had “taken note” of the Advisory Opinion, stressing that it was “nonbinding.”30 Two weeks later, a passing reference to the Advisory Opinion appeared in a joint statement from Prime Minister Trudeau and the prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand reiterating their call for a ceasefire and expressing concern about the mounting hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah. The statement generically called on Israel “to respond substantively to the ICJ's advisory opinion,”31 but offered no examples as to what that substantive response should entail. Canada's response to the advisory opinion A resolution came before the UN General Assembly on 18 September 2024, following up on the ICJ Advisory Opinion, which had, after all. initially been sought by the General Assembly. Among other provisions, the resolution “[w]elcomes the Advisory opinion … [and] [d]emands that Israel comply without delay with all its legal obligations under international law, including as stipulated by the International Court of Justice.”32 The resolution passed with 124 votes in favour, 14 against, and 43 abstentions.33 Canada was one of the countries to abstain. Many of Canada's close allies, such as France, Ireland, Norway, and New Zealand, supported the resolution, while many others, including Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, joined Canada in abstaining. Israel and the United States were among the fourteen states that opposed the resolution. In a statement, the government explained its decision to abstain rather than support the resolution, citing that it did not reference the “need to end terrorism, for which Israel has serious and legitimate security concerns” and that it contained “language that aligns with Boycott Divestment Sanctions, which Canada firmly opposes.”34 To a certain extent, the decision to abstain rather than oppose (which has tended to be Canada's voting record with UN General Assembly resolutions related to Israel/Palestine)35 the resolution may be seen as a small step forward. It was, however, sharply criticized by Canadian groups supportive of Israel.36 There has yet to be any acknowledgement of the steps that Canada is obliged to take—and therefore that it intends to take—in response to the ICJ's identification of a responsibility incumbent on third states not to “render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel's illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” What implications might there be, for instance, for Canadian trade policy, the charitable status of Canadian organizations, the involvement of Canadians in real estate deals in the OPT, or the possibility that the actions of some Canadians with respect to settlements in the OPT might even be tantamount to criminal liability for war crimes? Canada designated Hamas a “terrorist entity” under Canadian law in 2002.37 Numerous other Palestinian armed groups, such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, have similarly been designated. Since the October 7th attack, there have been four rounds of sanctions, targeting thirty-nine individuals, including Hamas leadership.38 Canada has been slower to take action against individuals and groups responsible for violence and human rights abuses against Palestinians. After considerable pressure, in May, June, and September of 2024, the government imposed three rounds of sanctions against a total of fifteen individuals and seven groups deemed responsible for “extremist settler violence against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank.”39 These are the first ever sanctions of that nature. However, no sanctions have been imposed against Israeli political leaders who have been widely condemned for supporting, facilitating, and inciting that extremist settler violence—notably Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Minister of Security Itamar Ben-Gvir.40 There have been repeated calls for Canada to impose a comprehensive arms embargo on any weapons, including parts and components, transferred either directly to Israel or indirectly through third countries, most notably the United States. While the government announced in January that no new export permits would be authorized, and later cancelled thirty existing permits, the ban is still far from comprehensive.41 For instance, Canadian-made parts are sold to companies in the United States, where they are used in the assembly of F-35 fighter jets destined for Israel. The Canadian Commercial Corporation, a Canadian Crown Corporation acting on behalf of General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems—Canada, also remains under contract to provide the US Department of Defense with artillery propellants that will be supplied to Israel.42 Reports indicate that C$95 million worth of military goods could be exported from Canada to Israel through to the end of 2025.43 It is also worth noting that the Canada–Israel Free Trade Agreement, which came into force in 1997 and was updated in 2019, extends its coverage to the “territory where [Israel's] customs laws are applied.”44 This means the trade deal includes Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which Canada considers to be unlawful. There was a concerted push by legal experts and human rights groups to exclude those unlawful settlements45—which, after all, constitute war crimes under international law—from the gamut of the trade deal when it was updated, but the government refused to make that change. Canada and the International Criminal Court Meanwhile, an announcement from Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the ICC, on 29 May 2024, raised further concerns about Canadian double standards regarding international law and institutions when it comes to Israel. Khan indicated that, as part of an ongoing investigation launched over three years ago, he was seeking arrest warrants for five key Israeli and Hamas leaders, including Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and its then minister of defence, Yoav Gallant, on war crimes and crimes against humanity charges in connection with the October 7th attacks in southern Israel and the aftermath in Gaza.46 Canada, famously, was an ardent champion of the establishment of the ICC in 1998.47 Canada's foreign affairs minister at the time, Lloyd Axworthy, played a key leadership role, and a Canadian, Philippe Kirsch, served as the first ICC president. However, rather than express support and offer a commitment to cooperate with Khan and the Court as the case proceeds, Prime Minister Trudeau, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, and Foreign Affairs Minister Joly all pilloried the prosecutor for having sought the arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant, decrying what they called an unhelpful “equivalence” between Hamas and the Israeli government.48 The government's position was criticized in an open letter to the prime minister from over 375 Canadian law professors, lawyers, legal scholars, academics, civil society, faith and labour movement leaders, and former diplomats and parliamentarians, including Axworthy and two former ambassadors to the United Nations, Allan Rock and Rosemary McCarney. The letter notes: The principles of equal treatment and access to justice in the field of international criminal justice do not, by any measure, amount to an equivalence of the nature you have decried. No country, no armed group, no corporation and no individual can be allowed to stand above or apart from the law. Nothing undermines justice more—at a national or international level—than double standards and exceptionalism. This commitment must be at the core of Canada's ICC position and foreign policy.49 Canada was among ninety-three states to subsequently endorse a joint statement on 14 June 2024 reaffirming that ICC officials and staff must be able to carry out their work “without intimidation.”50 While the statement does not explicitly mention the Israel/Palestine case, it is widely understood to be a response to threats that had been levelled at the Court by supporters of Israel, including the US House of Representatives.51 Beyond that, Canada's position regarding the application for the arrest warrants remained the same. On 21 November 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, more commonly known as Deif, commander-in-chief of the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas (known as the Al-Qassam Brigades). Warrants had initially been sought as well for Yahya Sinwar, then head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and Ismail Haniyeh, former head of the Hamas political bureau, but those applications were later withdrawn following evidence confirming their deaths.52 The arrest warrant issued for Deif was cancelled on 26 February 2025 after his death was also confirmed.53 In reaction to the news of the warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant being issued, Prime Minister Trudeau stated that Canada “will abide by all the regulations and rulings of the international courts.”54 Minister Joly, while declining to answer the “speculative” question about executing the Netanyahu and Gallant warrants if circumstances arose, confirmed that Canada must “abide by its treaty obligations.”55 While there is no explicit commitment to execute the warrants, the generic affirmations that Canada will abide by all rulings of the international courts, and by its treaty obligations, point in that direction. It is not as clear a statement of support as was made by many other governments, but at least it moves away from criticizing the prosecutor. Disregarding international law in Israel/Palestine weakens it everywhere And in the current volatile global context, with the United States, Russia, and China now regularly and flagrantly violating international law and disregarding—often contemptuously—international courts and human rights bodies, the need to vigorously and scrupulously reinforce international law has become imperative. The bottom line is that it is not enough, and is, in fact, dangerous hypocrisy, for the Canadian government to laud the important role of international law and international legal institutions in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if those legal standards and bodies are ignored, abandoned, or, at best, given lukewarm support by Canada when breached or disrespected. It is appropriate and necessary for international law to be at the heart of Canada's foreign policy with respect to the conflict. But that requires demonstrating, with decisive words and concrete measures, both internationally and nationally, that Canada means what it says in standing up for the rules-based international order that it has helped to shape since the 1940s. To do otherwise weakens the international legal framework at a time when it needs to be stronger than ever. Those consequences reverberate far beyond Israel and Palestine alone. Declaration of conflicting interestsThe author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.FundingThe author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.Notes1. Global Affairs Canada (GAC), “Canadian policy on key issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/international_relations-relations_internationales/mena-moan/israeli-palestinian_policy-politique_israelo-palestinien.aspx?lang=eng (accessed 10 April 2025).2. Prime Minister of Canada, “Statement by the Prime Minister on attacks against Israel,” 8 October 2023, https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/statements/2023/10/08/statement-prime-minister-trudeau-attacks-against-israel (accessed 10 April 2025).3. Marko Milanovic, “Does Israel have the right to defend itself?,” EJIL: Talk!, 14 November 2023, https://www.ejiltalk.org/does-israel-have-the-right-to-defend-itself/ (accessed 22 April 2025).4. United Nations (UN), Charter of the United Nations, 26 June 1945, Article 51, https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/full-text (accessed 10 April 2025).5. International Court of Justice (ICJ), Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Advisory Opinion, ICJ Reports 2004, paragraph 139, https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/131/131-20040709-ADV-01-00-EN.pdf (accessed 20 April 2025).6. Ibid., paragraph 141.7. Prime Minister of Canada, “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks with Israel War Cabinet member Minister Benny Gantz, 16 November 2023,” https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/readouts/2023/11/16/prime-minister-justin-trudeau-speaks-israel-war-cabinet-member-minister (accessed 10 April 2025).8. GAC, “Statement by Minister Joly on the International Court of Justice's decision on South Africa's request for provisional measures in its case against Israel,” 26 January 2024, https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/news/2024/01/statement-by-minister-joly-on-the-international-court-of-justices-decision-on-south-africas-request-for-provisional-measures-in-its-case-against-is.html (accessed 10 April 2025).9. Bill Blair (@BillBlair), “Canada continues to support Israel's right to defend itself in accordance with international law, following the brutal terror attack by Hamas on October 7. Hamas must immediately release those being held hostage,” X, 4 November 2023, https://x.com/BillBlair/status/1720983221398069565 (accessed 10 April 2025).10. UN Human Rights Council, The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/co-israel/index (accessed 10 April 2025).11. International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), “ICRC president tells Gaza forum: civilians must be protected, hostages must be released unharmed,” 9 November 2023, https://www.icrc.org/en/document/icrc-president-tells-paris-conference-gaza-immediate-imperative-is-to-save-lives (accessed 10 April 2025).12. Amnesty International, “Damning evidence of war crimes as Israeli attacks wipe out entire families in Gaza,” 20 October 2023, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/damning-evidence-of-war-crimes-as-israeli-attacks-wipe-out-entire-families-in-gaza/ (accessed 10 April 2025).13. B’Tselem—The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, “Manufacturing famine: Israel is committing the war crime of starvation in the Gaza Strip,” April 2024, https://www.btselem.org/publications/202404_manufacturing_famine (accessed 10 April 2025).14. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, “About 10 percent of the Gaza Strip's population killed, injured, or missing due to the Israeli genocide,” 25 July 2024, https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6420/About-10-percent-of-the-Gaza-Strip%E2%80%99s-population-killed,-injured,-or-missing-due-to-the-Israeli-genocide (accessed 10 April 2025).15. Bethan McKernan et al., “Palestinian prisoners describe systemic abuse in Israel's jails,” The Guardian, 5 August 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/05/palestinian-prisoners-describe-widespread-abuse-in-israels-jails (accessed 10 April 2025).16. ICJ, Application Instituting Proceedings Containing a Request for the Indication of Provisional Measures, Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel), 29 December 2023, https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf (accessed 10 April 2025).17. ICJ, Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel) – Provisional Measures, https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192/provisional-measures (accessed 10 April 2025).18. ICJ, Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel) – Orders, https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192/orders (accessed 10 April 2025).19. ICJ, Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel) – Order, 24 May 2024, paragraph 32, https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20240524-ord-01-00-en.pdf (accessed 10 April 2025).20. Alexandre Skander Galand and Wim Muller, “The ICJ's findings on plausible genocide in Gaza and its implications for the International Criminal Court, Opinio Juris,” 5 April 2024, https://opiniojuris.org/2024/04/05/the-icjs-findings-on-plausible-genocide-in-gaza-and-its-implications-for-the-international-criminal-court/ (accessed 10 April 2025).21. GAC, “Statement by Minister Joly,” 26 January 2024.22. Darren Major, “Trudeau says Israel needs to follow ICJ ruling and halt operations in Rafah,” CBC News, 24 May 2024, https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-icj-decision-rafah-1.7214231 (accessed 10 April 2025).23. ICJ, Request for Advisory Opinion pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 77/247 of 30 December 2022: Legal Consequences Arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, 17 January 2023, https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/186/186-20230117-REQ-01-00-EN.pdf (accessed 10 April 2025).24. ICJ, Advisory Opinion, Legal Consequences Arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, 19 July 2024, https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/186/186-20240719-adv-01-00-en.pdf (accessed 10 April 2025).25. Ibid., paragraph 261.26. Ibid., paragraph 279.27. ICJ, Request by the United Nations General Assembly for an Advisory Opinion on the Question of the “Legal Consequences Arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem,” Written Statement of the Government of Canada, 14 July 2023, https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/186/186-20230724-wri-01-00-en.pdf (accessed 10 April 2025).28. ICJ, Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem (Request for Advisory Opinion), Public hearings to be held from Monday 19 to Monday 26 February 2024, Press Release, 9 February 2024, https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/186/186-20240209-pre-01-00-en.pdf (accessed 10 April 2025).29. Justice for All Canada, “Canada's absence from ICJ hearings is a blow to Palestinian justice,” 20 February 2024, https://www.justiceforallcanada.org/icj-canada-withdrawal-feb20-2024.html (accessed 10 April 2025).30. The Canadian Press, “Ottawa says it has ‘taken note’ of UN court call for end to Israeli settlements,” The Globe and Mail, 19 July 2024, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ottawa-says-it-has-taken-note-of-un-court-call-for-end-to-israeli/ (accessed 10 April 2025).31. Prime Minister of Canada, “Joint statement by the prime ministers of Australia, Canada and New Zealand,” 26 July 2024, https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/statements/2024/07/26/joint-statement-prime-ministers-australia-canada-and-new (accessed 10 April 2025).32. UN General Assembly, Resolution ES-10/24: Advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the legal consequences arising from Israel's policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and from the illegality of Israel's continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, UN Document A/RES/ES-10/24, 9 September 2024, paragraphs 1 and 3, https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n24/272/75/pdf/n2427275.pdf (accessed 10 April 2025).33. UN, “UN General Assembly demands Israel end ‘unlawful presence’ in Occupied Palestinian Territory,” 18 September 2024, https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/09/1154496 (accessed 10 April 2025).34. GAC, “Canada abstains from United Nations General Assembly resolution on the Advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the legal consequences arising from Israel's policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” 18 September 2024, https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/news/2024/09/canada-abstains-from-united-nations-general-assembly-resolution-on-the-advisory-opinion-of-the-international-court-of-justice-on-the-legal-conseque.html (accessed 10 April 2025).35. Jeremy Wildeman, “Assessing Canada's foreign policy approach to the Palestinians and Israeli-Palestinian peacebuilding, 1979–2019,” Canadian Foreign Policy Journal 27 no. 1 (2021): 62–80.36. Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, “Canadian government breaks UN promise,” 18 September 2024, https://www.cija.ca/canadian_government_breaks_un_promise (accessed 10 April 2025).37. Public Safety Canada, “Currently listed entities,” https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/ntnl-scrt/cntr-trrrsm/lstd-ntts/crrnt-lstd-ntts-en.aspx#25 (accessed 10 April 2025).38. GAC, “Canadian sanctions related to terrorist entities,” https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/international_relations-relations_internationales/sanctions/terrorists-terroristes.aspx?lang=eng (accessed 10 April 2025).39. GAC, “Canada imposes third round of sanctions on perpetrators of extremist settler violence against Palestinian civilians in West Bank,” 18 September 2024, https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/news/2024/09/canada-imposes-third-round-of-sanctions-on-perpetrators-of-extremist-settler-violence-against-palestinian-civilians-in-west-bank.html (accessed 10 April 2025).40. Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, “Canada's sanctions on illegal settlers in the OPT,” August 2024, https://www.cjpme.org/fs_248 (accessed 10 April 2025).41. Steven Chase, “Mélanie Joly says Canada will block U.S.-bound ammunition sale destined for Israel,” The Globe and Mail, 10 September 2024, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-canada-suspends-arm-sales-israel-through-united-states/ (accessed 10 April 2025).42. Kelsey Gallagher, “Canada under contract to supply the IDF with artillery propellant,” Project Ploughshares, 26 March 2025, https://www.ploughshares.ca/publications/canada-under-contract-to-supply-the-idf-with-artillery-propellant (accessed 22 April 2025).43. Emma Paling, “$95 million in new Canadian military goods could flow To Israel By 2025,” The Maple, 1 August 2024, https://www.readthemaple.com/95-million-in-new-canadian-military-goods-could-flow-to-israel-by-2025/ (accessed 10 April 2025).44. GAC, Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement, 13 September 2019, article 1.7, https://www.international.gc.ca/trade-commerce/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux/agr-acc/israel/fta-ale/text-texte/toc-tdm.aspx?lang=eng (accessed 10 April 2025).45. Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, “Annexing Palestine through trade: The Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement and the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” September 2023, https://assets.nationbuilder.com/cjpme/pages/7341/attachments/original/1695662785/EN_-_Annexing_Palestine_Through_Trade_-_2023-010_-_FINAL.pdf?1695662785 (accessed 10 April 2025).46. International Criminal Court (ICC), “Statement of ICC prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan KC: Applications for arrest warrants in the situation in the State of Palestine,” 20 May 2024, https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-aa-khan-kc-applications-arrest-warrants-situation-state (accessed 10 April 2025).47. Valerie Oosterveld, Canada and the Development of International Criminal Law: What Role for the Future?, Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), Paper no. 16, March 2018, https://www.cigionline.org/static/documents/documents/Reflections%20Series%20Paper%20no.16web.pdf (accessed 10 April 2025).48. Marie Woolf, “Ottawa weighs in on ICC's warrant requests for Israeli, Hamas leaders,” The Globe and Mail, 21 May 2024, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-ottawa-says-canada-respects-independence-of-icc-but-rejects-comparing/ (accessed 10 April 2025).49. Open Letter, “A call for Canadian support for the ICC's work with respect to Palestine/Israel,” 29 May 2024, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5fc01c8f405d5340f3254abf/t/6657cdbfeebac657b722e956/1717030335790/Open+Letter+to+PM+Trudeau%2C+29.05.24+EN.pdf (accessed 10 April 2025).50. GAC, “Joint Statement in support of the International Criminal Court,” 14 June 2024, https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/news/2024/06/joint-statement-in-support-of-the-international-criminal-court.html (accessed 10 April 2025).51. Harry Davies, “ICC must be allowed to carry out work ‘without intimidation,’ say 93 member states,” The Guardian, 15 June 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/law/article/2024/jun/15/icc-must-be-allowed-to-carry-out-work-without-intimidation-say-93-member-states (accessed 10 April 2025); Caitlin Yilek, “House votes to sanction International Criminal Court over potential warrants for Israeli officials,” CBS News, 4 June 2024, https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/house-vote-international-criminal-court-sanctions-netanyahu/?intcid=CNM-00-10abd1h (accessed 10 April 2025).52. ICC, “Statement of ICC prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan KC on the issuance of arrest warrants in the situation in the State of Palestine,” 21 November 2024, https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-aa-khan-kc-issuance-arrest-warrants-situation-state-palestine (accessed 10 April 2025).53. ICC, Decision terminating proceedings against Mr Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al Masri (Deif), 25 February 2025, https://www.icc-cpi.int/court-record/icc-01/18-417 (accessed 10 April 2025).54. Robert Fife, “Trudeau says Canada would abide by ICC arrest warrants for Netanyahu, former defence minister,” The Globe and Mail, 21 November 2024, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-trudeau-says-canada-would-abide-by-icc-arrest-warrants-for-netanyahu/ (accessed 10 April 2025).55. CBC News, “Canada needs to follow ICC obligations, Joly says,” 21 November 2024, https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6571268 (accessed 10 April 2025).

Diplomacy
egypt between Israel and Palestine.  Israel egypt Palestine

Egypt's war in Gaza: a delicate balancing act

by Baudouin Long

For several years, Egypt – which recently announced that Hamas had accepted a ceasefire proposal negotiated in Cairo – has been playing a mediating role in the conflict in Gaza. As the only Arab country sharing a border with the Palestinian enclave, Egypt pursues strategic objectives that combine security concerns and domestic constraints – goals that are under pressure from Israel's expansionist policy. In the absence of a diplomatic solution, the situation in Gaza could have unpredictable consequences for the regime of Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, whose options, in the face of public opinion, remain limited to avoid the accusation of indifference and to mask its impotence against Tel Aviv. On August 18th, the announcement of a ceasefire accepted by Hamas, negotiated in Cairo based on a U.S. plan, highlighted the mediating role played by the Egyptian authorities in the war waged by Israel in Gaza. This role remains essential, even though Qatar's actions have often received more media attention due to the emirate's proximity to Hamas. A key and historical role as a mediator  Without going back to the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) or the Egyptian-Israeli peace agreements of 1979, Cairo has long been an essential player in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict due to its negotiation capacity between Israel and the Palestinians. Hosni Mubarak's Egypt (1981-2011) played a major role in most agreements concluded between the PLO and Israel after Oslo (1993) and was active in maintaining a channel of discussion with Israel during the Second Intifada (2000-2005). After Hamas's victory in the Palestinian legislative elections of 2006 and its takeover of Gaza in 2007, Egypt intervened in bilateral negotiations both between Hamas and Fatah and between Hamas and Israel during the conflicts of 2008-2009, 2012, 2014, and 2021, in which the victims were mostly civilians. The rise to power of Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi in 2014, following the overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi (2013), who was from the Muslim Brotherhood, created tensions with Hamas, which is close to the Islamist movement. Adjustments were necessary, but Egyptian intelligence maintained a discreet connection with Hamas and continued to carry out mediation missions with Israel or with Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority. Since October 7, 2023, alongside Qatar and the United States (the only actor able to pressure Israel), Egypt is once again at the heart of negotiations, whether they take place in Doha or Cairo. A first agreement under the sponsorship of the three states was reached in January 2025. Previously, in December 2024, Egypt had negotiated an agreement between Fatah and Hamas to establish an autonomous administration at the end of the war. A red line against Israeli expansionism?  In recent days, in light of Israel's expansionist policy, Egypt has made numerous statements regarding the situation in Gaza. The authorities in Cairo have expressed support for the establishment of an international peacekeeping force mandated by the UN, while denying rumors that they had proposed a transfer of Hamas's weapons to Egypt. In Rafah (Egypt), in an interview with CNN, Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty reaffirmed the rejection of a massive relocation of Palestinians, which he described as a 'red line.'  Earlier, President Al-Sisi had crossed a rhetorical threshold by denouncing a 'war of famine and genocide' and reiterated his refusal of any relocation plan. Egypt is also supporting the South African complaint to the International Court of Justice for violation of the Genocide Convention, without joining the stakeholders. These statements come in a dual context of a blockage of negotiations and an acceleration of Israeli operations, with Israeli territorial ambitions that could signify the end of any possibility for a two-state solution and a massive displacement of people outside of Palestine, particularly towards Egypt. The ceasefire negotiated in Cairo by Egyptian and Qatari mediators largely echoed the plan of Donald Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and thus represents a real advancement compared to the situation in early June, when the United States, along with Israel, had rejected the proposal made by Hamas to implement a truce. An advancement that, however, has not resulted in a breakthrough: a week later, Israel has still not responded to the negotiators' proposal. The announcement of the ceasefire accepted by Hamas comes as the Israeli security cabinet approved, on August 8, a plan to take control of Gaza and as the UN, after several warnings, declared a state of famine in the Gaza Strip. Various Egyptian statements also resonate with the vision of a 'Greater Israel' recently put forward by Benjamin Netanyahu, referring to the biblical borders of Israel that include territories currently belonging to Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, as well as part of the Sinai Peninsula. The idea of relocating the Palestinian population outside of Gaza is not new, although it has been rather marginal until now. Recently, Netanyahu has publicly considered relocating Gazans to Arab countries or Africa (negotiations in this regard have been mentioned several times). The Sinai, a key security issue for Egypt  Egypt, which shares a 14-kilometer border with the Palestinian enclave, the "Philadelphian corridor," is also a security player because it plays a key role, almost literally, in the blockade imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip (both in terms of its maintenance and/or its easing).  In this regard, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi's Egypt is not spared from criticism that denounces its inaction while, on the other side of the border, the war waged by Israel increasingly resembles ethnic cleansing, if not genocide.  The grievances are numerous and particularly concern the blocking of supplies at the Rafah crossing into Palestinian territory, the security treatment reserved for Gaza refugees – about 100,000 Palestinians have sought refuge in Egypt since the beginning of the war, paying high fees to the Hala company, which specializes in the 'coordination' of the Rafah crossing – as well as the security management of pro-Gaza protests, both in Cairo and in Sinai. It should be noted that Egypt administered Gaza from 1948 to 1967, before the strip came under Israeli control. Since then, Cairo's stance towards Gaza has always been deeply influenced by the situation in Sinai, a large desert area where the border between Egypt and Gaza is located. Occupied by Israel in 1967 following the Six-Day War (at the same time as the Gaza Strip), Sinai was recovered by Egypt in 1982. Underdeveloped territory with inadequate infrastructure, Sinai has been, for decades, a trafficking zone between Egypt, Israel, and Gaza.   As can be seen on this map, it is in the extreme northeast of the Sinai Peninsula that the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip is located. Peter Hermes Furian/Shutterstock After 2011, a local jihadist movement, which joined the Islamic State in 2014, thrived there before being gradually contained by the Egyptian army after a "dirty war" that resulted in several thousand casualties (more than 3,200 deaths among security forces, while the number of civilian casualties is unknown). Sisi proclaimed victory in 2023, with operations ending between 2019 and 2020. For Cairo, the management of Gaza is primarily a security issue. It involves containing trafficking, preventing the infiltration of armed groups more radical than Hamas, the most active of which is the Islamic Jihad, and avoiding an influx of Palestinian refugees, due to its logistical inability to organize such reception. Beyond the logistical question, Egyptian leaders fear a situation that could turn into a de facto state. They have in mind the Lebanese and Jordanian precedents, where the settlement of Palestinian refugees led to the events of Black September in the Hashemite Kingdom and to the civil war in the Land of the Cedar. This position is longstanding. As early as 2008, the forced entry of thousands of Palestinians into Sinai was perceived as a transgression of national sovereignty, a repetition of which must be avoided "at all costs."  Nevertheless, Egypt denies participating in the blockade or being inactive in the face of the tragedy experienced by the Palestinians. President Sisi himself responded to these accusations, reminding that it is Israel that has bombed the Rafah crossing multiple times and controls the Palestinian side of Rafah. Israel, which withdrew from Gaza in 2005, regained control of the Philadelphia corridor in May 2024. Egyptian media, echoing the government's talking points, emphasize the humanitarian convoys sent from Egypt: over 45,000 trucks, accounting for 70% of humanitarian aid, have reportedly supplied Gaza since October 2023 (noting that the crossings can only occur with Israel's agreement and under its security conditions). Between external constraints and internal pressures On the Palestinian issue, Egypt advocates for the establishment of a Palestinian state within the framework of a two-state solution. This is a historical positioning, defined by Anwar El-Sadat in his speech to the Knesset in November 1978. It translates into diplomatic actions, but since 2008, each Israeli war in Gaza highlights the limited scope of Egyptian engagement. However, for Sisi, this engagement comes with domestic constraints. The desperate situation of Gazans resonates widely in Egypt as well as throughout the region and provokes a strong sense of solidarity. Here too, the Egyptian government is caught in its contradictions. For many Egyptians, Hamas is not so much a terrorist movement as a resistance movement against Israel: indeed, even Cairo has not classified it as a terrorist organization, unlike the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. On one hand, the Egyptian authorities repress any demonstration that they do not organize themselves and that could challenge the regime. There is a mistrust of the street that refers to the importance of mobilizations supporting Palestinians in the militant trajectory that led to the 2011 revolution. On the other hand, the president and the government must take into account public opinion’s sensitivity and show that they are not powerless. In this regard, accepting the relocation of Palestinians in Sinai would make them accomplices in the eyes of Egyptians. In any case, Egypt's role seems hardly able to go beyond humanitarian aid and diplomatic negotiations. Peace with Israel remains a pillar of Egyptian foreign policy. Cairo will not jeopardize its bilateral relationship with Israel to the point of threatening to enter into armed conflict with it. Not only for economic reasons, or because part of Egypt's gas supplies depend on Israel – even if these can represent a leverage. In many aspects, the alliance with Israel is crucial for Sisi: beyond the support that Netanyahu was able to provide him by pleading his case in Washington after the coup against Morsi (2013), the Hebrew state is an economic partner, but also a security partner in the fight against jihadist groups still present in the Sinai. While red lines are stated, no real threat has been made.  However, rumors from government sources had circulated in February 2024: they spoke of the threat of a suspension of the peace treaty in the event of an Israeli invasion of Rafah. Alas, Israeli troops have occupied the border area since May 2024 without Egypt reacting in any way other than verbally. It seems particularly unlikely that the Egyptian army could be mobilized to intervene outside of a UN framework and without Israel’s consent. Diplomacy so as not to appear either indifferent or powerless?  It will be understood, therefore, that Egypt's recent statements are part of a long-term policy and do not indicate a change in direction. Israel's expansionist policy puts Egypt's strategic objectives under tension: the establishment of a Palestinian state as part of a two-state solution, the preservation of Egypt's sovereignty in Sinai and its security, and finally, the support of Egyptian public opinion.  While Israel responded to Cairo's announcement by mobilizing 60,000 reservists to carry out its plan to occupy Gaza, the question of the sustainability of this balancing act arises and exposes Cairo to reality. Alone, Sisi's regime can do nothing against Israel. While it is unlikely that the Egyptian president will take the risk of opposing militarily, he seems destined to appear indifferent or powerless. A humiliation on the Gaza issue could be costly for the autocrat internally and have dramatic consequences for the region. Therefore, Egypt is left with only the diplomatic path to get out of the rut. First, negotiate a ceasefire and then find an alternative solution to the Israeli occupation of Gaza. The latter could require Egypt's return to the Gaza Strip. But is Egypt really ready to play its part in a solution for Gaza beyond diplomatic negotiations?

Diplomacy
People gather to receive meals from the Rafah charitable kitchen (Tekka) as Palestinians face famine, in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on January 2, 2025.

The genocide in Gaza divides the leaders of the 'Arab street'

by Ricard González

As the two-year mark of Israel’s invasion of Gaza approaches, many wonder why Arab countries are not pressuring Israel. The answer is often simple: they are prioritizing their strategic and economic interests. Since the beginning of Israel’s ruthless offensive in Gaza on October 7, 2023, images have repeatedly shown Palestinian civilians crying out desperately to the cameras for help: “Where are the Arabs? Why isn’t anyone stopping this?” Almost two years later, despite the fact that fewer voices doubt that what began as a war has turned into a genocide that has taken the lives of more than 60,000 Palestinians, Arab states have not shifted even an inch from their initial stance: harmless statements of condemnation, without any action to pressure Israel. “Where are the Arabs? Taking a nap… By Arabs, I mean their rulers, with their heads buried in the sand,” declared Fawaz Gerges, professor at the London School of Economics, in a recent interview with the U.S. network NBC. In fact, it has often been non-Arab countries, thousands of kilometers away from Gaza, that have tried to stand up. Such is the case of South Africa, the country that denounced the existence of genocide in the enclave before the International Court of Justice in The Hague. “In general, Arab regimes have not taken concrete measures in response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The main reason is the prioritization of their strategic and economic interests over popular sentiments of support for Palestinians in the face of the horror they are experiencing. This is not surprising given that most [of the regimes] rule based on growing authoritarianism,” asserts Yara Hawari, co-director of the Palestinian think tank Al Shabaka. The gap between the street and the palace This gap between the opinion of the so-called “Arab street” and its rulers is evident in every new survey. In one of the most comprehensive, conducted by the Doha Institute with the participation of around 8,000 people from 16 different Arab countries, 92% of respondents believe that the Palestinian cause concerns all Arabs and not only Palestinians. A similar percentage, 89%, opposes normalizing relations with Israel. For an overwhelming majority, 84%, the genocide in Gaza represents a source of “great psychological stress,” and for another 13% it also constitutes a source of stress, though to a lesser degree. “Although they are not democratic, Arab regimes cannot entirely ignore their respective public opinions, which are horrified by what is happening in Gaza. That is why they must strike a delicate balance. They fear that discontent over their positions on Gaza could converge with other grievances — of which there are many — and potentially trigger social unrest,” explains Haizam Amirah Fernández, executive director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CEARC). So far, this has translated into statements condemning the massacres of civilians perpetrated by Israel, others in support of creating a Palestinian state, and the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gazans when approved by Tel Aviv. Of the 22 states that make up the Arab League, a total of six have signed an agreement to establish diplomatic relations with Israel. The first to do so was Egypt (1979), followed by Jordan (1994), and then Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Sudan joined under the so-called Abraham Accords sponsored by Trump in 2020 — although Sudan, currently in civil war, has not implemented it. In addition, other states maintain varying degrees of economic relations or security cooperation with Israel, such as Saudi Arabia. Among all these countries, none has broken diplomatic relations with the Israeli state over Gaza, and only Jordan has withdrawn its ambassador. On the other side, among Arab countries with a more hostile stance toward Israel, are Algeria, Tunisia, and Houthi-controlled Yemen, the only one that has applied military pressure on Israel by launching missiles and harassing maritime traffic in the Suez Canal. Lebanon and Iraq represent particular cases, as both are highly fragmented politically and home to pro-Iranian militias that consider Israel an enemy, such as Hezbollah — an opinion not shared by the entire political class. The reasons behind the indifference of so many Arab states toward Gaza are varied. First, some leaders — especially those of the Gulf petro-monarchies — perceive Iran or the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization linked to Hamas, as a greater threat than Israel. Faced with this sense of insecurity, also shared by President el-Sisi in Cairo, many look toward the West. “The permanence in power of these leaders does not depend on the choice of their citizens or subjects, but on external support from the United States, and this shapes their position on Palestine,” asserts Amirah Fernández, who lists several actions these countries could have taken to pressure Israel: from breaking or suspending bilateral agreements, such as the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, to applying serious pressure to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza and thus allow humanitarian aid to reach the enclave, whether by land or by sea. Egypt, for example, has dedicated itself to repressing activists who attempted to carry out such actions near the Gaza border. The “realpolitik” of the new generation of leaders Beyond their deference to the West, the positions of Arab states in some cases respond to a stark calculation of “realpolitik”: the benefits they can gain from their relationship with Israel — a technological and military power — outweigh what an occupied people like the Palestinians can offer. [...]  In an interview with El Salto, journalist Antony Loewenstein, author of the book “The Palestine Laboratory”, explained how the sale of weapons and cyber-espionage tools has become a kind of insurance policy for Israel against possible retaliatory actions. “Almost a quarter of Israel’s [arms] exports went to Arab dictatorships, such as the United Arab Emirates […]. No Arab state has cut ties with Israel, and they won’t,” Loewenstein said. Against this backdrop, for decades the only common denominator among Arab states regarding the Palestinian issue has been the mere signing of joint declarations in support of the “two-state solution” to resolve the conflict with Israel. At the end of July, within the framework of a United Nations-sponsored summit to promote that solution, the “Arab consensus” unexpectedly expanded with all Arab League countries signing a declaration urging Hamas to disarm and hand over control of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority. Thus, the only bold — and unprecedented — action taken during nearly two years of genocide in Gaza has been to pressure Hamas and not Israel. A very bleak record for pan-Arab solidarity. 

Defense & Security
Jerusalem - March 01, 2020: Campaign billboard for

Shutdown Nation: The Political Economy of Self-Destruction

by Shir Hever

Abstract This article examines that the shift in Israeli society and political economy from ethnic socialism to individualistic capitalism was accompanied by a shift from a strategic and collectivist liberal Zionism to a nonstrategic individualistic right-wing populism. It is a shift that made the State of Israel vulnerable to shock and crisis, and turned it “from a startup nation to a shutdown nation.” Unlike the crisis caused by the 1973 war, Israel lacks the tools to cope with the crisis of October 7 and embarks on a path of self-destruction.Keywordssettler colonialism, right-wing populism, Middle East economies 1. Introduction: Zionism’s Transition From Collectivist to Individualistic Settler Colonialism The State of Israel is a settler-colonial project (Robinson 2013), and as such has never been self-sufficient. Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion cultivated Israel’s alliance with Western imperialism as part of a strategy to keep the Israeli military supplied with modern weapons and trading partners. Meanwhile, some neighboring Arab states cultivated an alliance with the Soviet Union. The bane of colonial societies is always the same: arrogance, and in Israel’s arrogance the seeds of its downfall were planted. Israeli society, very much like the white population of apartheid South Africa, developed a culture on racist foundations, and the disdain of the Indigenous Palestinian population spread to a patronizing and racist attitude towards Israel’s non-white Jewish population (Mizrahim and black Jews; Ben-Eliezer 2007). The history of Israel’s political economy can be traced along the trajectory of this arrogant approach and the events that confirm, or undermine, Israel’s arrogance. I briefly mention two such seminal events before proceeding to the more contemporary developments. The first was the war of 1967, which has given rise to Israel’s messianic religious right wing, certain that God is on Israel’s side. Israel’s “miraculous” victory against three Arab armies in just six days, commemorated in Israel’s name for the war “The Six Day War,” confirmed every racist stereotype in Israel’s colonialist culture. Popular songs celebrating Israel’s victory hit the radios, and the project of building illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land, deporting prominent Palestinian leaders, and using collective punishment, such as home demolitions, have put a strain on Israel’s alliance with the imperialist West. Israel’s military industry was transformed by these events. After France, Israel’s biggest arms supplier at the time, imposed a military embargo on Israel because of the occupation, a new school of thought emerged in Israel’s security elite, arguing that Israel does not need to rely on foreign suppliers and could potentially produce all of its weapons and ammunition locally. The victory also gave rise to what Israelis have later retroactively called “the Conception”—the arrogant belief that Arab states will never try to defeat Israel on the battlefield again—having been overwhelmed by Israel’s superiority. The second event worthy of note occurred just over six years later, the war of 1973, also known as the October War. On October 6, 1973, Syria and Egypt launched a surprise attack that shattered Israel’s “Conception.” Israeli forces suffered heavy casualties, lost battles, and were forced to withdraw until the United States intervened with large-scale arms shipments. Israel’s dependency on Western support became undeniable. Even though Israeli forces, with the help of US weapons, eventually pushed back the Syrian and Egyptian armies, Israel was bloodied and traumatized. Israeli economists referred to the following decade as the “lost decade”—in which public resources were diverted to the arms industry and a large section of the workforce was recruited for extended military service with the reserves. The generation who fought in the 1973 war became wary of the danger of colonial arrogance (Bar-Joseph 2003). It was the generation that called for moderation in politics, for strategic thinking. The self-sufficiency illusion was nixed. Instead, Israel worked hard to position itself within global politics as a “bastion” against communism (just like South Africa did), and after the fall of the Soviet Union as a bastion against Islamic terrorism. The Oslo Peace Process was supposed to be Israel’s alibi, a show of willingness to compromise over territory in exchange for Western political legitimacy and normalization with Arab neighbors. Instead of a self-sustaining economy, Israel developed its political economy as a niche economy, becoming the world capital of the homeland security sector, with hundreds of companies exporting Israel’s “security expertise” in the form of surveillance technology, culminating in the export of spyware (Loewenstein 2023: 207). 2. Rise of the Right-Wing Populism in Israel The liberal Zionist project to rationalize colonialism has gradually failed, because of arrogance. In his article in Hebrew “A factory for blind spots” Ran Heilbronn explained the collapse of Israel’s security “expertise” through the reliance on technology and the belief that reality exists in the data, rather than the data being a tool to describe reality (Heilbronn 2024). The Israeli security industry conceived of the occupation as a laboratory for developing tools of oppression and marketing them as “field-tested” (Loewenstein 2023: 49). It has failed to reflect that the identity of the self-appointed security experts as colonizers makes them predictable. This is especially the case in their tendency to repeatedly underestimate Palestinians, because respecting the ability of Palestinians to develop creative methods of resistance and outwit Israeli oppressive measures undermines the racist arrogance that is necessary to justify apartheid (Shlaim 2015: 133–180). The rise of the populist right wing in Israel can be explained through the intergenerational discourse among Jewish Israeli society. The generation that fought in the militias to expel the Indigenous Palestinian population and establish the State of Israel, as well as its children, were raised on the collectivist values and glorifying sacrifice (Feige 2002: v–xiv). As a popular 1948 song by Haim Gouri played on official state ceremonies states, “love consecrated in blood will blossom amongst us once again.” Subsequent generations, those born since 1967, the “euphoria” period (including the baby-boom generation after the 1973 war; Ozacky-Lazar 2018: 18–24) and their children, have been raised on the sense of entitlement to the spoils of war for which their parents and grandparents made great sacrifices. Calls for further expanding the borders, acquiring more land, and building more settlements, which were consistently made by the settler movement, have been perceived by the older elites as an ungrateful disrespect to their own sacrifices, and that Israel is at a risk of overextending itself and losing everything. This has become the main narrative of liberal Zionism (Ayyash 2023). The intergenerational shift from strategic, “rational” Zionism based on calculated sacrifice for the purpose of colonizing Palestine while maintaining both a Jewish majority and good relations with the West, toward a religious populist Zionism built on a sense of entitlement, dismissing threats and obstacles to the Zionist Project, is a shift dialectically inherent to the colonial process and inseparable from it (Sabbagh-Khoury 2022). Every colonial society has a “founders” generation that is honored for its commitment to the collective national project at great personal costs, which is followed by increasingly entitled generations who are born with privileges and do not feel the need to earn or defend them. The colonial mythology exaggerates the significance of the founders’ efforts who “gave their lives to ensure that this land will be ours for posterity.” The demand from younger generations to make efforts to secure the land and the privileges of the colonizers diminishes from the mythology and is therefore rejected. The younger generations simply expect to inherit their privileges (Veracini 2010: 40). The right-wing advocates of collectivist nationalism and sacrifice (following the path of Jabotinsky, who in his Iron Wall manifesto warned that Palestinians will never give up their struggle against colonial domination, and Zionism must engage in an eternal battle (Jabotinsky 1923), have all but disappeared, being replaced by the right-wing populists, led most prominently by Benjamin Netanyahu. The main attraction of the right-wing populism is the idea of impunity: Israel can have its cake and eat it too. Disregard international law and international pressure, underestimate the potential of Palestinian resistance, and not make any sacrifices (Shad 2015: 167–178). As the rate of conscription to the Israeli military plummeted since the 1990s (Arlosoroff 2019; Shalev 2004: 88–101), Israelis became accustomed to justifying military aggression against Palestinians from the comfort of their armchairs. While refusal to serve remains a marginal phenomenon, draft dodging had become the norm, rather than the exception (Perez 2018). Yagil Levy referred to this shift as a capital-intensive warfare, using technology and expensive weaponry to multiply the impact of a smaller number of soldiers, thereby also increasing the negotiating power of those soldiers who were able to make demands for material and nonmaterial rewards in exchange for their military service, which conscripts would normally not be able to make (Levy 2003: 222). The populist right wing conflates the State of Israel with the Jewish people, ignoring both the existence of non-Jewish Israelis and the existence of non-Israeli Jews. Instead of addressing criticism and planning strategic responses, populists use ad-hominem attacks to delegitimize criticism. Netanyahu dismisses critique against Israel’s apartheid and war crimes as “antisemitic” whether it’s the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestments, Sanctions; Black 2014), legal action from the International Court of Justice or from the International Criminal Court (Heller 2019), or even recognition of the State of Palestine (Landale 2024). Eventually this populist argument has become mainstream so that even opposition leaders from the liberal Zionist factions adopted it (TOI Staff 2022). The liberal Zionist forces found themselves at a disadvantage after the invasion of Lebanon in 2006, which was seen as a military failure, and was exploited by the far right to accuse the government of weakness (Erlanger 2006). The Israeli attack against Gaza just before the February 2009 elections claimed the lives of over 1,400 Palestinians, most of them civilians. The leader of the liberal-Zionist camp at the time, Tzipi Livni, served as minister of foreign affairs. Her position was (and remains) that the liberal Zionist camp is more strategic and has more tools to secure Jewish control over Palestine than the populist right wing (Livni 2018). This argument backfired because the populist right wing grew domestically stronger in the face of threats of international restrictions. The same process occurred in 2022 with the publication of four reports about Israeli apartheid (Abofoul 2022), leading to the collapse of the last liberal Zionist government, which could not come up with a strategy to defend Israel from the accusation of apartheid. Just like the brutal attack on Gaza in the winter of 2008, the government of liberal Zionist parties tried to demonstrate its brutality toward Palestinians accusing six Palestinian civil society organizations of terrorism without showing evidence (OHCHR 2022) and by granting impunity to the soldier who murdered Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on May 11, 2022, in the course of the military campaign in the Jenin refugee camp (Al Jazeera 2022). This tactic failed in the elections of November 2022 just as it failed in the February 2009 elections. In early 2023, with the most far-right government in Israel’s history embarking on the judicial overhaul project, the people who protested the government’s antiliberal policy were the very same who maintain and profit from Israel’s security sector (Goodfriend 2023). Protestors in Tel-Aviv have adopted the slogan of the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestments, Sanctions) “from startup nation to shutdown nation” and printed it on a huge banner that they carried through the streets (Ben-David 2023), warning that Israel’s economy will shut down because of the policies of the far-right government. The demonstrators holding the sign were likely unaware of the fact that the slogan was coined by BDS, which is another example of blind spots caused by an unsustainable colonial situation. The prediction was prophetic, but interestingly the very same people who argued that Israel’s military strength is directly connected to the economic strength of its security sector, who warned against the economic collapse, did not predict the simultaneous collapse of Israel’s military strength. The rise of right-wing populism in Israel is fueled by elements that are inherent to the Israeli case: the settler-colonial intergenerational conflict, the economic transformation of the social contract, and the shift in the military structure and the role of militarism in society. Nevertheless, a fourth factor cannot be ignored, which is the rise of the populist right wing in the whole world, with the polarization of politics after the dashed expectations following the nineties (Greven 2016). The model of the right-wing populist leader—racist, hedonist, and corrupt—was only known in two countries in the nineties: in Israel with Netanyahu’s first term and in Italy with Silvio Berlusconi, before becoming widespread in the rest of the world starting in 2016. 3. The Systemic Vulnerability A key difference between the crisis of the 1973 war, and the crisis that Israel is experiencing since October 7, 2023, is the change in the economic structure of Israel. In its first three and a half decades of existence, Israel had a corporatist economic structure (Shalev 1986: 362–386), in which the government, unions, and the private sector cooperated to bolster and maintain the apartheid economic system, until the neoliberal reforms of 1985 (Ben Basat 2002: 1–22). Israel’s federation of labor unions—the Histadrut—played a central role in keeping Palestinian workers from the occupied West Bank and Gaza as a cheap and exploited labor force both before and after the reforms (Hiltermann 1989: 83–91). The reforms, however, changed the social contract at the base of the settler-colonial state. From a nationalist project in which the privileges of the Jewish population are collectively protected and collectively enjoyed by the Jewish population at the expense of the Indigenous Palestinian population, the neoliberal reforms turned Israel into an individualistic society in which privileges are enjoyed individually and reproduced by market forces for profit (Shalev 1986). In parallel to the way that a neoliberal order restructures the social contract between state and citizen, it also restructures the contract between state and soldier. As Yagil Levy argues, the Israeli tech sector serves as a reward mechanism to attract recruits into prestigious units, such as the notorious unit 8200, for the prospect of future lucrative employment in the private sector. This “negotiation,” to borrow Levy’s term, creates a military vulnerability. The collapse of Israel’s tech sector impacts the motivation of soldiers to serve in Israel’s technological units (Levy 2012: 47). The capitalist structure is more vulnerable. In the absence of a strong social safety net, individuals are expected to make their own risk assessment (Swirski et al. 2020: 5). Modern finances are a system of management expectation. Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler have shown that the depths of crisis in capital can be measured in a time perspective. Cyclical crisis is marked by short-term expectations coupled with a long-term expectation for recovery. Investors attempt to build predictive models based on their assessment of future developments. In a systemic crisis, however—what Kliman, Bichler, and Nitzan call “systemic fear”—the predictive models are built on historical data, and investors are making fewer references to the future (Kliman et al. 2011: 61–118). One of the first voices to herald that the State of Israel has reached a dead-end was Marwan Bishara, who focused on the aspect of Israel’s regional integration into the Middle East, which remains an essential strategic element in Israel’s sustainable existence, but which could not continue after Israel embarked on the onslaught against the Gaza Strip, intentionally targeting civilians (Bishara 2023). The oppressive structure of the State of Israel is vulnerable to the external pressure that is applied by Palestinian resistance, which takes the form of both armed and unarmed resistance. The armed resistance is much less relevant to the discussion here, because the capitalist vulnerability is suspended in times of “security crisis,” framed as a temporary time in which collective mobilization and sacrifice are necessary. The unarmed forms of Palestinian resistance such as BDS expose the vulnerability of Israel’s apartheid and challenge the sustainability of the oppressive structures (Awad 1984). The slogan “they oppress, we BDS” leaves Israelis with no choice but to consider whether the same methods used to crush the Palestinian resistance are in the end self-defeating (Barghouti 2020). Palestinian resistance has developed through stages, searching for means to overcome Israeli oppression. Collective leadership replaced individualistic leadership in order to survive assassinations (Baylouny 2009). Intersectional and progressive alliance building proved effective in creating solidarity in the heart of Israel’s Western support bases, especially North America and Western Europe (Salih et al. 2020). While liberal Zionism excelled in infiltrating Palestinian society and sabotaging its resistance (Cohen 2009), the populist right adopts the dehumanization of Palestinians as a fact, rather than a tool, and is therefore unable to infiltrate Palestinian society effectively. As Major General Amos Gilad said in 2011 “we don’t do Gandhi very well” (Dana 2011)—Palestinians found the weak point in Israel’s oppressive regime. Israel’s closest allies begin to contemplate the unthinkable—the end of the Zionist state. For Germany, whose unconditional support for Israel turned into a quasi-state religion due to an intentional conflation of Judaism and the State of Israel (Moses 2021), the notion that the State of Israel will cease to exist is more controversial than the speculations about the imminent demise of the GDR (German Democratic Republic, which was dismantled in 1990). Nevertheless, even German mainstream media cannot silence the shutdown nation voices when they come from Israeli Jews or former Israeli Jews (Tschemerinsky 2024). Two prominent Israeli economists, Eugene Kandel and Ron Tzur, wrote a scathing report in which they come to the conclusion that Israel will not survive to its 100th year and kept the document a secret, worried that it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Faced with lack of interest from the government, however, they gave interviews about the report (Arlosoroff 2024). Israeli billionaire Gil Schwed compared Israel to Afghanistan—a state that collapsed under an Indigenous insurgency and abandoned by its US ally, and which does not attract foreign investments (Cohen 2024). The Haaretz newspaper published its editorial on Israel’s Independence Day with the headline that Israel will not survive to celebrate its 100th Independence Day. In the English version of the newspaper, the headline was qualified with the extra text “unless we are rid of Netanyahu” (Haaretz 2024). The expected delayed collapse is meaningless in a capitalist economy. Investors who believe that the State of Israel is a time bomb with a twenty-year timer will not buy Israeli bonds, nor invest in the economy. Parents will not want to raise children into (what they perceive as) an inevitable catastrophe and will exhaust all available options for leaving with their family (Silverstein 2024). Three Israeli historians have also addressed the events of October 7 and their aftermath as the end of the Zionist projects. Moshe Zimmermann, a Zionist scholar of German history and German-Israeli relations, commented in an extended interview that the Zionist project set up to create a secure haven for Jews, but that the State of Israel, the result of the Zionist project, has failed to protect its Jewish citizens on October 7, to take responsibility for the failure, or to develop a strategy to create more security in the future (Aderet 2023). From the opposite perspective, Ilan Pappe, an anti-Zionist scholar of the history of Palestine, published an essay listing six indicators to the demise of the Zionist project (Pappé 2024). Although the State of Israel does not by definition share the same fate of the Zionist project, and can conceivably exist without a Zionist government, Israeli institutions have, nevertheless, in the moment of crisis after October 7, published statements attesting to the centrality of Zionism to Israel’s existence as a state. The strongest example of these statements is the letter written by the Hebrew University to Knesset member Saran Haskel justifying the suspension of Prof. Nadera Shalhouv Kevorkian over her criticism against Zionism, by stressing that the Hebrew University is a Zionist institution (rather than an academic institution in which a plurality of opinions is encouraged) (Odeh 2024). Such unanimous agreement among Zionists and anti-Zionists about the fate of the Zionist project and its significance to the future of the State of Israel is an unprecedented consensus. Six months into the war, a third Israeli historian, Yuval Noah Harari, wrote that Israel is entering an unsustainable phase of global isolation and military defeat, and that only a quick ceasefire and structural change of policy (i.e., a break from Zionism) could save the State of Israel from demise (Noah-Harari 2024). 4. Conclusion It is this vulnerability, a society built on individualism and privilege, which made the October 7 attack a much bigger trauma for Israelis than other disasters that claimed the lives of hundreds, or even thousands, such as the 1973 war. The Israeli discourse cannot imagine a scenario in which the State of Israel and the Zionist project will recover from the crisis. Despite obsessive discussions about recovery (Bachar 2024), the need for national unity (Shwartz 2024), waging war until the “total victory” (Tharoor 2024)—the public discourse is full of Cassandrian predictions of doom—and every failure of the public institutions, whether in education, housing, electricity production, or health care, is seen as the tip of a much bigger iceberg (Motsky 2024). A state, its political economy, and its political culture require more than just institutions de jure to function. It requires a collective belief in a sustainable political project with a perspective into the future. The future of the people living in historical Palestine, between the river and the sea, whether Palestinians or Israelis, is very uncertain, but one thing seems almost certain—the current political system will not stay in place for long—and the process of its collapse carries a tremendous economic significance. It is too early to say how exactly the political changes effect the economic changes. The threat of economic crisis is tremendous, just as economic efforts are needed to recover from the war, rebuild the Gaza Strip, and treat the physical and mental injuries suffered. It can lead to default on the debt, hyperinflation, and pauperization of thousands. But the potential for ending Palestine’s isolation in the Middle East and opening trade, the resources diverted from security and the military to civilian purposes, and a recovery of the tourism sector can paint a positive scenario as well. Liberal Zionism developed an effective, albeit highly immoral, strategy of settler colonialism. It cultivated a strong Jewish collective around a myth of individual sacrifices for the sake of the nation. This strategy contributed to Israel’s ability in its first decades to expand its territory through illegal occupations while maintaining good relations with the West. But in the long run, it contained the dialectic seeds of its own destruction. Younger generations were taught to accept the achievements of liberal Zionism as permanent, so why should they sacrifice anything? For decades, liberal Zionists warned that the populist right wing undermines the foundations of the Zionist project itself. But even though these warnings were accurate, liberal Zionists failed to acknowledge how the system of Jewish supremacy and apartheid that they have established eventually and unavoidably led to the takeover of the Zionist project by an entitled and unstrategic generation. An important caveat must accompany this article. The weakness of Israeli institutions is in their ability and their willingness to perceive reality. All three historians quoted here for their texts about the imminent end of the Zionist project share a common blind spot: they do not acknowledge the role of the Palestinian resistance in bringing down the Zionist project, and speak in terms of tragedy (the tragic hero bears responsibility for his own downfall). The caveat here is that I too, the author, may not necessarily be in a better position to perceive reality. Speaking the same mother tongue, coming from the same cultural background and education system as Pappé, Zimmermann, and Harari, I cannot help but wonder what is the missing element of the puzzle that I am unable to see in its entirety. Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.FundingThe author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.ReferencesAbofoul Ahmed. 2022. Sound but insufficient: The mainstream discussion on the question of applicability of apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Opinio Juris March. Accessed at: https://opiniojuris.org/2022/03/21/sound-but-insufficient-the-mainstream-discussion-on-the-question-of-the-applicability-of-apartheid-in-the-occupied-palestinian-territory/.Aderet Ofer. 2023. 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Defense & Security
The national flag of the Arab League on the background of flags of other countries

Arab-Israeli Mix: Low-scale Protests and the Increase in Terrorism Following the Outbreak of the Swords of Iron War

by Gadi Hitman , Nesya Rubinstein-Shemer

AbstractThis article seeks to examine the behavior patterns of the Arab society in Israel since the Israel-Hamas War began in October 2023. The uniqueness of this population is the ethnic-national and religious differences between it and the Jewish majority and their identification with the Palestinians. Theoretically, the behavior patterns will be analyzed using a model of three variables: religion, citizenship, and nationality. This qualitative study, based on interviews, media clips, and public statements by Arab public leaders, identifies several opposing trends: an increase in the scope of terrorism, protests on a limited scale, and the lack of a uniform response by the Arab leadership to the Hamas attack and the war that followed it.KeywordsArab society in Israel, terror, protest, leadership, Hamas, citizenship, identity Introduction On October 7, 2023, Hamas-led militants attacked Israel, killing more than 1,100 Israelis, including at least 20 Arab citizens. The Israeli response was a declaration of war on Hamas, which led to mass destruction within the Gaza Strip. As of December 2024, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, more than 46,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces (AP, 2025). This is the highest number of victims on the Palestinian side since 1948. This figure raises a question regarding the reaction of Arab society in Israel, whose ethnic-national identity is the same as that of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Scholars dealing with majority–minority relations, as in the case of Jews and non-Jews in Israel, tend to agree that 1948 was a turning point that affected the mutual relations between the parties. Israel became a sovereign state for Jews, which obliged it to establish a policy toward the non-Jewish minority, also called the Arabs in Israel. The established policy was based on two pillars: First, Israel sought to be a democracy, and hence, basic rights, such as citizenship, were given to the Arab minority. Second, Israel saw the Arab minority as a security threat due to its ethnic and religious affinity with the larger Arab world. This concern led to the imposition of a military administration (1948–1966) on the Arabs in Israel, which led to the creation of, on the ground, the following reality: a Jewish majority lives alongside an Arab minority. Both sides held common citizenship but differed in two characteristics, religion and nationality. This is how majority–minority relations revolve around a fixed triangle that serves as a basis for analyzing mutual relations both in routine and in cases of tension between the parties (Boimel, 2007). Historically, the Arabic society in Israel has recorded many incidents of protests on national, religious, or civil grounds. Protest events that degenerated into violence included 1958 events in Nazareth; on Land Day in 1976; in 1982 after the massacre in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon (Sabra and Shatila); in the case of Umm el-Fahem lands in 1998; in the events of October 2000, and in May 2021 (Hitman, 2023). The ongoing war between Hamas and Israel since October 2023 is another case study that makes it possible to analyze the behavior of Arab society in Israel. Theoretical Framework The interaction between the state (or regime) and the people, namely, civilians, residents, illegal immigrants, and foreigners, is among the prominent topics that have been studied in recent decades (Coutin, 2011; Nyers, 2018). The existing sociological, political, anthropological, and legal literature delineates and analyzes case studies of confrontations between these parties worldwide. When case studies of mass protest or collective violence are discussed, the relevant questions are why, when, or what led to the clash between the state and the people and what led to an escalation. Every group of people has six potential methods to use when it is forced to respond to a regime’s policy or when it strives to achieve its goals through self-initiative: dialogue, separatism, indifference, identification, protest, and violence (Hitman, 2020). Israel is a multicultural country with a heterogeneous population consisting of Jews and non-Jews. Within these two categories are cultural subcategories: among the Jews, there are ultra-Orthodox, religious, traditional, and secular communities. Among the non-Jews, there are Arabs (Muslims and Christians), Druze, and other religious, ethnic, and linguistic minorities who have cultural freedom. As far as this study is concerned, the analysis distinguishes between the Jewish majority and the non-Jewish or Arab minority, whose religious and national identity is not that of the Jews. The cultural, religious, ethnic, and national diversity in such diverse societies raises questions about minority rights and how to achieve them. The differences between the Jewish majority and the non-Jewish minority are religious and national. The common denominator is that they are all citizens of Israel. The differences between the groups within Israel and the fact that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not yet come to a solution create a basis for friction between the parties on religious, national, or civil grounds. The last outbreak in May 2021 came after more than two decades of peaceful relations between the Arab minority and the Jewish majority following the events of October 2000 (Barnea, 2024). During these decades, Israeli Arab citizens, most of whom define themselves as Palestinians, had several opportunities to escalate the security situation within the state and challenge the regime: Operation Defensive Shield in Jenin (2002), the Second Lebanon War (2006), Operation Cast Lead (2008), the Marmara Flotilla (2010), Operation Pillar of Clouds (2012), Operation Protective Edge (2014), and the Nation-State Bill (2018) passed by Knesset. In all these cases, the Arab Israeli citizens’ response was to protest within the framework of the law (Frisch, 2017). The conceptual framework and the brief historical overview allow a discussion of the action patterns of Arab society in Israel following the war that began in October 2023. Even if the end date of the war is still unclear, it seems that after more than a year of ongoing hostilities, certain trends within this population can be pointed out. This article seeks to assert two preliminary claims. First, the scale of protest by Arab society in Israel in response to the war in Gaza is low and offers several explanations for this. Second, there has been a moderate increase in the scope of terrorism by individuals within Arab society, apparently due to the influence of the war. The article also aims to analyze the public statements of the Arab leadership in Israel and examine whether there is a consensus or differences in approaches that originate from different ideologies. Based on the triangle model of citizenship, nationalism, and religion, the study hypotheses are: 1) The increasing number of terrorist attacks, as noted below, carried out by Israeli Arabs since October 2023 indicates identification with the Palestinians in Gaza on a national basis. 2) The limited number of protests within the framework of the law reflects a tendency of most of the Arab public to prefer Israeli citizenship over national or religious identification with the Palestinians and with Hamas. 3) The public positions of the Arab leadership reflect ideological differences: Mansour Abbas adheres to a civil partnership, while his political opponents from the Joint List cling to their Palestinian national identity. Methodology This study adopts a combined qualitative and quantitative methodology based on the three hypotheses it seeks to confirm or refute. In the quantitative aspect, it maps the cases where there was a possibility of protest or violence on the part of the Arab society in Israel following the outbreak of the war in October 2023. Such events could be protests against the delivery of the law, clashes with the security system, or terrorist acts against Jews. Qualitative research aims to examine feelings, ideas, and experiences that are often impossible to translate into quantitative numerical data. The religious, national, or civil narrative is the most common tool to examine feelings and thoughts in qualitative studies because it allows researchers to analyze testimonies from their statements and activities. Thus, qualitative methodologies are likely to be used when seeking perceptions, opinions, and approaches, as in this specific study (Ugwu & Eze Val, 2023).In the qualitative aspect, statements were collected from the Arab society on social networks, leading Israeli and global news websites, and statements from public figures at the national level. It was then analyzed according to keywords relevant to this study, such as Israeli occupation, jihad, condemnation of Hamas terrorism, support for Palestinian terrorism, and identification with the victims in Israel and Gaza. Incidents of Terrorism In general, the number of Israeli Arabs involved in terrorism since 1948 is low (Abu Mookh, 2023; Kobowitz, 2019). Despite ethnic-national and religious diversity, which creates significant potential for sparking violence, various reasons have led to a trend of low-volume terrorism. An analysis of the data in the decade preceding October 2023 reveals the following picture: 1) According to the Israeli Security Agency (ISA), in 2013, the involvement of Israeli Arabs in terrorist attacks continued to be minor. The characteristics of terrorism in this case were twofold: going to Syria and joining ISIS or connecting to terrorist infrastructures of Palestinians in the West Bank (Shabak, 2013). 2) Most terrorist incidents involving Israeli Arabs in 2014 (a total of 10 cases) were related to outbreaks of protest and disorder, which included the use of Molotov cocktails attacks against Jewish drivers and setting fire to their cars. One case of the murder of a young Jewish woman by a Bedouin taxi driver stands out (Shabak, 2014). 3) In 2015, there was an increase (a total of 41 Israeli Arabs joined ISIS; a total of 15 terror attacks) in the scope of terrorism committed by Israeli Arabs: shooting and stabbing attacks in which 2 Israelis were killed and 13 wounded. This was also a year in which ISIS was at its peak, and this affected dozens of Israeli Arabs who joined its ranks. ISIS terrorist cells were exposed in several Arab communities, and Israel’s security forces arrested 41 Israeli Arabs (Shabak, 2015). It was likely due to the influence of propaganda by ISIS, which included calls to harm infidels. Between 2018 and 2022, the trend of terrorism by Israeli Arabs continued on a low scale (Abu Mookh, 2023; Kobowitz, 2019). An exception was the month of May 2021, in which violent clashes occurred between Arabs and Jews and security forces (Wall Guard incidents). These attacks resulted in the deaths of 14 Israelis, the vast majority of them members of the security system, such as soldiers and police (Nassar, 2022; Schlesinger, 2018). Regardless, the average number of attacks carried out by Israeli Arabs was four per year, significantly lower compared to the number since the war in Gaza began in October 2023. This indicates that the majority of Arab society has chosen to uphold the law and not risk punishment on criminal or security grounds that have the potential to harm the chances of integration into Israeli society. In this case, the civil element prevailed over the other elements in the relationship triangle. Based on media reports, since October 7, 2023, there has been a real increase in terror attempts and attacks by Israeli Arabs against Jews (mainly security forces). Based on various media and newspaper sources, one can identify that at least 13 cases were registered since October 7, of which Israeli Arabs executed 9 attacks and 4 were thwarted by the Israeli security forces. An analysis of these cases leads to the following insights. First, most of the perpetrators chose to commit stabbing attacks (six cases). In other cases, there were mob attacks, throwing stones, and one an attack that was a combination of a mob followed by an attack with an ax. Second, all involved were males between the ages of 13 and 28. An unusual case involved 9- to 10-year-old children throwing stones in the city of Lod (central Israel). Third, two Jews were murdered, and at least ten were injured, some of them severely. Fourth, all the attacks that were not thwarted were carried out by a single attacker and without the support of institutionalized terrorist organizations. Most of the victims were killed, and most of the perpetrators were affected by the security escalation in Israel, which is also a combination of religious (Hamas) and national (Palestinian) identification of the perpetrators. Finally, a geographic analysis of the attacks indicates diverse areas that include the north of Israel (4), the center (3), and the south (2) (Elbaz et al., 2024; El-Hai & Zeitoun, 2024; Eli & Moghrabi, 2024; Lalotashvili, 2023). An analysis of the terrorist attacks by the Arab population in Israel would not be complete without referring to terrorist attempts that the security forces in Israel managed to thwart. In March 2024, the Israeli media revealed that the Shin Bet and the police had uncovered a cell headed by Muhammad Khaled and Muhammad Yosef, residents of the city of Sakhnin (northern Israel). They intended to carry out terrorist acts in Israel, and members of their group purchased weapons originating from the West Bank. Khaled was in contact with the Hamas infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, which provided him with instructions for preparing explosives and directed him to recruit more members to promote terrorist activity (Alkalai, 2024). A senior police officer estimated that the events of the war in Gaza led to the decision of several individuals to establish a terror cell as part of their identification with Hamas. As part of the cooperation with the Palestinians (Hamas members from the Gaza Strip), the possibility of damaging strategic facilities within Israel was also examined (Hachmon, 2024). In July 2024, three young civilians from Kalansawa (central Israel) were arrested on suspicion of having contact with Palestinian terrorists from the West Bank and supplying weapons to terrorist elements. As part of the investigation, among other things, a pipe bomb, an M16 rifle, a Carlo rifle, another gun, and ammunition were seized (Diaz, 2024). In April 2024, a terrorist network consisting of Arab Israelis and Palestinian residents of the West Bank was exposed for conspiring to carry out serious and extensive terrorist activity throughout Israel (Koriel et al. 2024). The head of the cell is Bilal Nasasara, an Israeli Arab living in Rahat in the south of the country, who was responsible for recruiting operatives from Israel. During their investigations by the ISA, it was revealed that the suspects planned to carry out attacks near IDF bases and secure facilities, including the Ben-Gurion Airport. They also planned to assassinate the Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir after obtaining an RPG missile and kidnap IDF soldiers (Hacohen, 2024). Casualties among Israeli Arab Society following Hamas’ Attack The analysis of the terrorist data is only part of the characteristics and phenomena of the Arab society in Israel since October 2023. Close to 30 Muslim Arabs, citizens of Israel, were also murdered by Hamas (Goldman & Koplewitz, 2023) despite a fatwa from Hamas itself that forbids harming them (Izz al-din al-Qassam, 2022). Among the murdered were pregnant women (Sharon, 2023). These figures and the cases presented below illustrate the shared fate of living together as citizens of Israel. In this respect, the terrorist attack by Hamas did not distinguish between Jewish and Muslim victims. One of the prominent phenomena observed during the Hamas attack on Israel was the mutual guarantee between Jews and Muslims, all citizens of Israel. The story of Amer Abu-Sabila illustrates the shared fate of Muslims and Jews on October 7. Abu-Sabila, a 25-year-old father of two toddlers and an Israeli citizen from the Bedouin community in the Negev, saw Hodaya, the mother of two young daughters, in her car trying to escape the scene after her husband had been murdered before her eyes. Due to the intensity of the trauma, she was having difficulty driving, so Abu-Sabila got into her car to take her and her daughters to what he thought would be a safe place—Shderot police station. No one knew that at that time, armed terrorists were surrounding the police station building to take it over. When they arrived at the police station, Amer and Hodaya were murdered by Hamas terrorists, while the two little girls, aged 3 and 6, lay on the floor of the car in the back seat, witnesses to the horror (Times of Israel, 2023). Eventually, the two girls were rescued by the Israeli security forces who arrived at the scene a little later (Gabai, 2023). Abd al-Karim Nasasara from the Bedouin settlement of Kseifa in the Negev was also murdered by Hamas terrorists when he tried to rescue young people from the Nova music festival in Re’im (October7memorial, 2023). The 23-year-old Awad Musa Darawshe, from the northern Israeli village of Iksal, was in the festival complex as an ambulance driver and paramedic. When the terrorists entered, he found himself being approached by many wounded. He chose to stay and care for them until he was murdered (Hauzman, 2023). Yosef al-Ziadna, a resident of Rahat, was a minibus driver who took young people to the Nova festival on Friday. When frightened young people called him on Saturday morning at the start of the Hamas attack, al-Ziadna did not think twice and went to rescue them despite the entire area being under attack. With extraordinary bravery and despite continuous gunfire, he tried to save as many young people as possible. He managed to get 30 survivors of the massacre into his vehicle and save their lives. Al-Ziadna himself lost a relative who was murdered, and four of his family members were kidnapped to Gaza (Kidon & Cohen, 2023). Condemnations of the Hamas Attack among Arab Leaders The Arab political leadership in Israel is divided upon ideological lines: there are communists, Islamists, and nationalist parties. Among the Islamic parties is the United Arab List or the southern branch of the Islamic Movement (hereafter: Ra’am), headed by Knesset member Mansour Abbas. Ra’am represents the southern faction of the Islamic Movement in Israel. In contrast, the northern faction of the Islamic Movement, led by Sheikh Raed Salah, was outlawed by the State of Israel in 2015. On the other side, there are nationalist parties—Balad, led by Sami Abu Shehadeh, and Ta’al, led by Ahmad Tibi—and the communists (Hadash), led by Ayman Odeh. This section examines some of the statements of Arab leaders in the wake of the October 7 attack (Hitman, 2018). Mansour Abbas was the first Arab leader to condemn the Hamas attack as early as noon on October 7, when the dimensions of the disaster were not yet so clear. On his Twitter account, he denounced the “unfortunate, tragic, and obscene” events and called on all citizens of the country, Jews and Arabs, to behave responsibly and not be drawn into incitement. On October 10, he called on Hamas to release the abductees in their hands because “Islamic values command us not to imprison women, children, and the elderly” (Abbas, 2023). On November 6, he became the first Arab leader to meet with the heads of the families of the abductees (Shavit, 2023). On November 10, Abbas said in a TV interview that since the beginning of the war, he had been working as hard as possible to help free the hostages by appealing to religious leaders in the Muslim world. He watched the documentary Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre to feel the pain of the victims (Shinberg, 2023). Abbas also called for the removal of Knesset member Iman Khatib Yassin from his party, who claimed there was no massacre. He came out against the Balad demonstration that took place the day before—November 5, 2023—and claimed that Balad does not represent the mindset of Arab society. What does represent the mood in Arab society, according to Abbas, is the survey conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute in November 2023, which showed an unprecedented record of 70% identification of Israeli Arabs with the state (Abu Mookh, 2023). He concluded by saying that the goal is for Jewish and Arab societies to overcome this crisis together in peace (Oko, 2023). Statements and actions of this kind reflected Abbas’s choice of a civil partnership between Jews and Arabs in Israel, a position he has been advocating in recent years and stands in contradiction to the position of other political parties that prefer to highlight the Palestinian national identity. In another survey conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute (December 25, 2023), more than half of Arab society supported the positions of Abbas, according to whom the Hamas attack does not reflect Arab society and the values of Islam. Furthermore, most Arab societies supported the war effort (As’ad & Kaplan, 2023). Ahmad Tibi condemned the harm to civilians (but not fully), hurled accusations at the government and the Israeli right wing, and wrote about the need for an end to the occupation and peace for all parties (Tibi, 2023). On October 11, Tibi spoke about the efforts he was making to prevent incitement in the mixed cities, and on October 13, he addressed the Knesset, speaking about the difficult times and the horrific acts of murder committed in the South. He also spoke about the fact that there were Jewish victims as well as Arabs (Muslims) and condemned the events, but at the same time, he stated that revenge in the Gaza Strip was not the solution to the conflict (Tibi, 2023). Ayman Odeh wrote on his Twitter account on October 10, 2023 that the blood of the innocent was crying out and that there was another way, the way of peace, to be realized through the vision of two states (Odeh, 2023). In another post on the same day, he wrote that he had made calls to console his Jewish friends from Netiv HaAsara, his Arab friends from the Negev, and his friends from the Gaza Strip for the loss of their loved ones (Odeh, 2023). On October 11, Odeh, like Tibi, wrote that he was trying with local leaders in mixed cities and with the police to prevent violence and called on the Arab public to show restraint and responsibility. On October 13, in his speech in the Knesset, Odeh stated that nothing in the world, not even the occupation, justified harming civilians. He claimed that revenge in the Gaza Strip is not the solution and that only a political solution aimed at peace would bring security (Odeh, 2023). Theoretically and empirically, these statements reflected rhetorics to merge authentic sympathy for the Israeli (Jew and Arab) victims and, at the same time, to call for a solution to the ethno-national conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Sami Abu Shehadeh did not condemn the atrocities of October 7. Instead, he accused US President Joe Biden of giving Israel the green light to carry out ethnic cleansing of Gazans, expressing his pain about this (Abu Shahadeh, 2023). On October 17, Abu Shahadeh wrote on Twitter of the hypocritical Western approach toward Israelis and Palestinians. Given Biden’s visit to Israel on October 18, he asked whether Biden intended to pass through the Gaza Strip and see the Israeli damage or talk to the families of the injured Gazans (Abu Shahadeh, 2023). Raed Salah, the leader of the northern faction of the Islamic Movement, distributed a video on Al-Jazeera in which he addressed the international audience and asked every Muslim, Christian, and Jew to call for an end to the war (YouTube, 2023). He called on the public to spread peace, oppose damage to mosques, churches, and synagogues, and allow freedom of prayer. He spoke against harming the innocent: the elderly, women, and children (Al-Jazeera, 2023). In this video, Salah used general phrases about harming innocent people. There was no reference in it to the massacre committed by Hamas on October 7 or its condemnation. A month after the start of the war, Salah appealed in an interview on Al-Jazeera to every person of conscience in the world to call for an end to the humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip. In addition, he praised the European nations, who, unlike their governments, showed humanity and took to the streets (YouTube, 2023). Sheikh Salah’s activity reflects full religious identification with Hamas (both movements emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood). His call for a worldwide protest against Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip was the maximum he could do. He chose not to incite a protest inside Israel because the faction he heads was outlawed, and he knew he risked another indictment. In this case, he took advantage of his right as a citizen in a democratic country to raise his voice without breaking the law. Kamal Khatib, Salah’s deputy within the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, also ignored Hamas’ atrocities and focused on accusing the Israeli side. On October 11, he wrote on Facebook that there was Jewish incitement against Arab Israeli leaders and that Jewish groups had distributed lists with the names and addresses of Arab leaders in Israel and defined them as a fifth column (Khatib, 2023). He said that the threats would not affect them or change their identity. He signed off the post with the following sentence: “We are getting closer to salvation, be happy” (Khatib, 2023). On October 24, he uploaded a video to the YouTube channel of Muwatini 48, a channel associated with the northern faction of the Islamic Movement, under the title: “Has the military government returned?” In the video, he said: “Since 7 October, what has happened in Israel, our people in the Palestinian interior have been exposed to an unprecedented attack.” He talked about gagging, preventing demonstrations, and preventing freedom of expression, as well as about the hundreds arrested and indicted. He concluded by saying he was not afraid of any threat and was proud of his Palestinian and Islamic identity (YouTube, 2023). In terms of reviewing the statements of the leaders of the Arab public after the massacre of October 7, their statements are not uniform and reflect personal (and collective) identity and ideology. The Islamic Movement’s Northern Branch was careful about expressing support for Hamas but emphasized religious and Palestinian identity. The nationalists focused on the Palestinian side being the victim of the conflict, and the communists called for a peaceful solution and coexistence between the parties. Anti-war Protests among the Arab Public Hamas attempted to recruit Israeli Arabs to its ranks as early as on October 7. In a recorded speech published on that day, Muhammad Deif, the commander of the military wing of Hamas, called on the Arabs of Israel to join Hamas (YouTube, 2023). Hamas sees the Israeli Arabs as a significant force that can help them in any conflict with Israel due to their proximity to major traffic routes and population concentrations (MEMRI, 2023). Previously, in May 2021, Hamas managed to mobilize the Israeli Arabs, who broke out in violent riots all over the country, especially in mixed cities (Hitman, 2023). Scholars in the Muslim world affiliated with Hamas also tried to harness the Muslim citizens of Israel for war against the State of Israel. For example, on November 7, 2023, the International Union of Muslin Scholars (IUMS) issued a fatwa regarding the duty of the governments of Arab countries and Muslims worldwide concerning the war in Palestine. They stated that all Muslims have an obligation to go out and fight for the victory of Gaza; according to the circle theory, with the first circle being the Palestinians in the West Bank, the second being the 1948 Arabs living in Israel, followed by the Arab countries neighboring Israel and, finally, the other Arab and Muslim countries (Ijtihad & Fatwa Committee of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, 2023). All these efforts were made based on a common national and religious identity. Unlike May 2021, when Israeli Arabs erupted in violent riots all over Israel, the religious leadership of the Muslims in Israel, namely the Islamic Movement’s two factions, did not respond to this call by IUMS. The Arab society in Israel responded to the war in Gaza with demonstrations and manifestations of protest. An exception in this context is the story of teacher Rami Habiballah from the north of Israel, who contacted Hamas operatives abroad to promote terrorist attacks in Israel during the war (Senyor & Mughrabi, 2024). The constant dilemma of the Arab residents of Israel, based on the triangle model presented in this article, was also expressed in the manifestations of the protest. On the one hand, some lost their family members in the war, and, on the other hand, some called for an end to it, claiming identification with Gaza. On October 12, 2023, the police dispersed a 15-vehicle Hamas support convoy in Umm el-Fahem and detained four people for questioning (Machol, 2023). On October 18, before the IDF’s ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, Arab demonstrators took to the streets of Haifa Um el-Fahem and Taiba, calling for an end to the war in the Gaza Strip. Following the demonstrations and clashes with the police, several protesters were arrested (Khoury, 2023). On November 9, 2023, senior figures in the leadership of the Arab public, including Muhammad Barakeh, head of the Monitoring Committee of the Israeli Arab Leadership, and senior members of Balad (Abu Shehadeh, Hanin Zoabi, and Mtanes Shehadeh), organized a demonstration against the war in the northern city of Nazareth. The senior leadership of the Arab public in the country was invited to the demonstration. The demonstration was dispersed because the police claimed it was illegal (Sha’alan, 2023). In January 2024, a protest was held in Haifa to stop the war. This protest was the first of its kind, as both Jewish left-wing activists and Israeli Arabs from Haifa attended it. The protesters called for peace, an end to the war, and a stop to the cycle of bloodshed (Al-Jazeera, 2024). Unlike previous protests, the participants were asked to demonstrate their shared citizenship and concern for the victims and express their hope for ending the conflict. On March 2, 2024, a demonstration was held in Kafr Kanna. The demonstration was organized by the Supreme Monitoring Committee of the Israeli Arab Public after many difficulties in obtaining the necessary approvals from the Israeli police. In this demonstration, calls were heard for an end to the war in the Gaza Strip, identification with the Palestinians, and resistance to the occupation. In addition, Barakeh addressed the common national identity of the Israeli Arabs and the Palestinians, stating that the Arab public would not forget what is happening in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and that the Arab public was best suited to protecting Al-Aqsa and the holy places from “the occupying Zionists” (Halevi, 2024). It can be observed that despite the severe war in the Gaza Strip, the destruction, and the many Gazan casualties, there was no escalation in the reaction of Israeli Arabs. Unlike the violent events of May 2021, they chose to maintain a low profile and limit their actions to calling for an end to the war through nonviolent demonstrations. This pattern of sporadic demonstrations led residents of the Gaza Strip to accuse Israeli Arabs of not participating in the protests, not supporting Gazans, and remaining silent throughout the war (Zbeedat, 2024). This situation can be understood considering that Israeli Arabs were also affected by the Hamas attack. Two additional reasons for the lack of violent incidents between Jews and Arabs are the enforcement policies of the Israeli police and the Ministry of Justice against expressions of support for Hamas or Gaza and the informational campaign by the Israeli government aimed at the Arab public (Sha’alan, 2024). In practice, the Israeli establishment implemented a stringent enforcement policy against anyone suspected of supporting Hamas or encouraging terrorism within Israel, particularly on social media. This was the case in November 2023, when the police arrested 103 suspects for expressing support for Hamas, with 46 indictments filed. In comparison, from 2018 to 2022, only 88 indictments were filed (Ma’anit et al., 2023). The fact that in the summer of 2024, the number of demonstrations by Arab society against the war has significantly decreased shows not only a routine in the shadow of war but a growing understanding that despite identification with the Palestinian nation, life has its own dynamics, and being citizens of a democratic state creates opportunities for them (alongside threats due to being a minority group). In almost all cases, the decision to stick to peaceful demonstrations is an expression of the clear preference of the Arab public to stick to their citizenship. The fact that the police arrested a few hundred out of a population of 1.5 million is also evidence that the majority of Arab society in Israel sympathizes with the Palestinian nation but remains indifferent when it is required to act in protest or violence to promote Palestinian national interests. Finally, the ongoing war has increased the lack of trust between Jews and Arabs. It is a common phenomenon in majority–minority interaction, especially when the political–identitarian conflict is intractable (Vered & Bar-Tal, 2017). The two cases below illustrate this argument: • Maisa Abd Elhadi, an Arab citizen of Israel from Nazareth, is known for her roles in numerous Israeli series and films and for representing Israel at international festivals. After the Hamas attack, Abd Elhadi posted content on social media expressing support for the terrorist organization and showing enthusiasm for the abduction of Israeli soldiers and civilians to the Gaza Strip (Sever & Machol, 2023). As a result, she was detained for questioning by the police, the broadcasting company HOT announced the termination of its association with her, and her representation agency, Kafri ended its contract with her (Mish’ali, 2023). Ultimately, she was released after 1 day of detention and placed under house arrest with restrictive conditions until December 2024 (Moshkovitz, 2023). • Dr. Abed Samara, the head of the cardiac intensive care unit at Hasharon Hospital, was suspended from his position in mid-October after the hospital’s management interpreted posts he made on Facebook expressing support for Hamas (Drucker, 2023; Efrati, 2023). After a month and a half of suspension and a battle to clear his name with the hospital administration, Samara decided in early December to leave the hospital where he had worked for 15 years due to the hostile atmosphere and the breach of trust between him and the management. The war between Israel and Gaza since October 2023 was another opportunity for Hamas to mobilize Arab society in Israel to support it on the basis of a common national identity. The long duration of the war resulted in reactions within the Arab society that highlighted identification with the Palestinian victims which was mainly expressed in support from afar through social platforms. Along with this, there was a minor increase in the number of terrorist attacks, although the protest was in low numbers. The Israeli government, against the backdrop of the war, took a rigid approach toward Arab demonstrators in an attempt to deter any escalation. Yet, the vast majority of the Israel Arabs did not participate in protests or engage in violence. Conclusion Like previous conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians, the war in the Gaza Strip once again illustrated the complexity of Israeli Arabs’ reality and identity. They have Israeli citizenship and live among Jews. At the same time, their national and religious identities are different from the Jewish majority. This permanent situation and their activity since the beginning of the war in the Gaza Strip in October 2023 lead to several conclusions. First, they have no immunity against possible harm from terrorism. Second, their national and religious identity led a small number of them to act illegally and violently and carry out terrorist attacks against Jews. Third, compared to 2014, there has been an increase in the number of terror attacks carried out by Israeli Arabs. It is an outcome of shared national (and sometimes religious) identity with the Palestinians. Fourth, the vast majority of Arab society in Israel did not take part in protests or violence in response to the war. They remained passive and continued their lives without risking punitive measures from the government. In this context, it is worth noting that there has been an increase in the Arab society’s level of fear of the Israeli establishment, and some of the elements representing it have announced strict enforcement in the case of identifying with Hamas or breaking the law. Finally, the Arab leadership is not united in its attitude to the war. Their public statements reflect a traditional ideological difference, which puts an insurmountable barrier to forming a unified front of a minority society that constantly asks to improve its standard of civil life. Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.FundingThe authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.ORCID iDGadi Hitman https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9018-1241ReferencesAbbas Mansour. (2023, October 7). 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Diplomacy
UAE planes drop humanitarian aid on displaced people's tents in Al-Mawasi, west of Khan Yunis city in the southern Gaza Strip, on Oct 17, 2024.

New peace plan increases pressure on Israel and US as momentum grows for Palestinian statehood

by Scott Lucas

A new vision for Middle East peace emerged this week which proposes the withdrawal of Israel from Gaza and the West Bank, the disarming and disbanding of Hamas and the creation of a unified Palestinian state. The plan emerged from a “high-level conference” in New York on July 29, which assembled representatives of 17 states, the European Union and the Arab League. The resulting proposal is “a comprehensive and actionable framework for the implementation of the two-state solution and the achievement of peace and security for all”. Signatories include Turkey and the Middle Eastern states of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and Jordan. Europe was represented by France, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Spain and the UK. Indonesia was there for Asia, Senegal for Africa, and Brazil, Canada and Mexico for the Americas. Neither the US nor Israel were present. Significantly, it is the first time the Arab states have called for Hamas to disarm and disband. But, while condemning Hamas’s attack on Israel of October 7 2023 and recalling that the taking of hostages is a violation of international law, the document is unsparing in its connection between a state of Palestine and an end to Israel’s assault on Gaza’s civilians. It says: “Absent decisive measures toward the two-state solution and robust international guarantees, the conflict will deepen and regional peace will remain elusive.” A plan for the reconstruction of Gaza will be developed by the Arab states and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation – a Jeddah-based group which aims to be the collective voice of the Muslim world – supported by an international fund. The details will be hammered out at a Gaza Reconstruction and Recovery Conference, to be held in Cairo. It is a bold initiative. In theory, it could end the Israeli mass killing in Gaza, remove Hamas from power and begin the implementation of a process for a state of Palestine. The question is whether it has any chance of success. First, there appears to be growing momentum to press ahead with recognition of the state of Palestine as part of a comprehensive peace plan leading to a two-state solution. France, the UK and, most recently, Canada have announced they would take that step at the UN general assembly in September. The UK stated that it would do so unless Israel agreed to a ceasefire and the commencement of a substantive peace process. These announcements follow those made in May 2024 by Spain, Ireland and Norway, three of the other European signatories. By the end of September at least 150 of the UN’s 193 members will recognise Palestinian statehood. Recognition is largely symbolic without a ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal from both Gaza and the West Bank. But it is essential symbolism. For years, many European countries, Canada, Australia and the US have said that recognition could not be declared if there was the prospect of Israel-Palestine negotiations. Now the sequence is reversed: recognition is necessary as pressure for a ceasefire and the necessary talks to ensure the security of both Israelis and Palestinians. Israel accelerated that reversal at the start of March, when it rejected the scheduled move to phase two of the six-week ceasefire negotiated with the help of the US, and imposed a blockade on aid coming into the Strip. The Netanyahu government continues to hold out against the ceasefire. But its loud blame of Hamas is becoming harder to accept. The images of the starvation in Gaza and warnings by doctors, humanitarian organisations and the UN of an effective famine with the deaths of thousands can no longer be denied. Saudi Arabia and Qatar, behind the scenes and through their embassies, have been encouraging European countries to make the jump to recognition. Their efforts at the UN conference in New York this week are another front of that campaign. Israel and the Trump administration But in the short term, there is little prospect of the Netanyahu government giving way with its mass killing, let alone entering talks for two states. Notably neither Israel nor the US took part in the conference. Trump has criticised the scenes of starvation in Gaza. But his administration has joined Netanyahu in vitriolic denunciation of France and the UK over their intentions to recognise Palestine. And the US president has warned the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, that recognition of Palestinian statehood would threaten Canada’s trade deal with the US. In response to Trump’s concern over the images of starving children and his exhortation “We’ve got to get the kids fed,” Israel has airdropped a few pallets of aid – less than a truck’s worth. Yet this appears more of a public relations exercise directed at Washington than a genuine attempt to ease the terrible condition on the Strip. A small number of lorries with supplies from UN and humanitarian organisations have also crossed the border, but only after lengthy delays and with half still held up. There is no security for transport and delivery of the aid inside Gaza. A sacrifice for a state? So the conference declaration is not relief for Gaza. Instead, it is yet another marker of Israel’s increasing isolation. After France’s announcement, the Netanyahu government thundered: “Such a move rewards terror and risks creating another Iranian proxy … A Palestinian state in these conditions would be a launch pad to annihilate Israel.” But while recognising Hamas’s mass killing of October 7 2023, most governments and their populations do not perceive Israel as attacking Hamas and its fighters. They see the Netanyahu government and Israeli military slaying and starving civilians. Even in the US, where the Trump administration is trying to crush sympathy for Palestine and Gazans in universities, non-governmental organisations and the public sphere, opinion is shifting. In a Gallup poll taken in the US and released on July 29, only 32% of respondents supported Israel’s actions in Gaza – an all-time low – and 60% opposed them. Netanyahu was viewed unfavourably by 52% and favourably by only 29%. Israel has lost its moment of “normalisation” with Arab states. Its economic links are strained and its oft-repeated claim to being the “Middle East’s only democracy” is bloodstained beyond recognition. This will be of no comfort to the people of Gaza facing death. But in the longer term, there is the prospect that this sacrifice will be the catalyst to recognise Palestine that disappeared in 1948.

Defense & Security
Map and national flag of Yemen (Republic of Yemen), a mixed-terrain country in Southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula in Middle East with Sana'a as its capital

The Yemeni Crisis: Structural Characteristics and Contemporary Developments

by Sergey Serebrov

The structure of the Yemeni crisis (YK) developed step by step throughout the period after the unification in May 1990 of two republican states — the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) — into a unitary state. The rushed and unprepared process of merging the government bodies and armies of two countries with different political systems and ideologies, but related historical, cultural, and ethnic communities, coincided with major global changes: the transformation of the international system, the collapse of the USSR, and the Gulf War, which brought sanctions from the United States and Gulf monarchies against the young state, as well as the expulsion of nearly one million Yemeni labor migrants from these countries. After that, political Islam began to grow stronger across the region. Both countries entered unity carrying a heavy burden of internal social and political problems, hoping that unification would create a new model of development, and that a new source of income from oil exports — from fields recently discovered in the neighboring provinces of Marib and Shabwa — would speed up modernization and help solve these problems. But this did not happen — the democratic institutions, multi-party system, and the first direct presidential elections introduced by the new state’s constitution did not stop the return to power of the conservative coalition from the YAR era, and the oil reserves were not enough to repeat the success of wealthy oil-producing countries. However, the alliance between the General People’s Congress (GPC) and Islah quickly turned into rivalry just a few years after they defeated the former ruling party of the PDRY — the Yemeni Socialist Pa rty (YSP) — in 1994. A religious reform focused on spreading Salafism, led by the Islamist wing of Islah (Yemen’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood), became a tool of political struggle. It challenged the regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh (1947–2017), who personally oversaw the state’s security sector but gave Islah control over education and significant legislative functions. The reform led to growing tensions — first due to clashes with the Shafi’i traditions in the South, and then with Zaydi practices in the North. The aggressive spread of a proselytizing version of radical Salafism through a network of religious colleges (ma'ahid ilmiyya) under Islah’s supervision was seen by local communities as an official government policy. This created distance between society and the state. Dissatisfaction with the country’s social, economic, and political situation turned into conflicts of identity of a new kind, with no precedent in Yemen’s history. These conflicts had nothing to do with the traditional Sunni-Shia divide, as Yemen has long been home to two Islamic schools — the Shafi’i (about 60% of the population) and the Zaydi (about 40%) — that are close in theology and law (aqidah and fiqh). In public opinion, the situation was seen as a clash between true Islam rooted in authentic Yemeni traditions and a foreign, radical takfiri current that caused deep divisions. The consequences of this conflict in the South appeared in the idea of a “southern identity,” which replaced the idea of a united Yemeni identity that the republican regimes of the YAR and PDRY had promoted before unification. This idea became the base of the ideology of “southern nationalism,” which set the “southern” society against the “northern” or “Yemeni” one — describing the first as “advanced” and the second as “backward,” tribal, and fundamentalist, and therefore incompatible. Since 2009, political leaders of the South Yemeni separatist movement “Hirak” (Peaceful Southern Movement) have used the slogan of restoring the status quo — independence of the South within the 1990 borders of the PDRY — as the best way to peacefully solve the “southern question.” At the same time, in the northern Zaydi provinces of Yemen, the takfiri practices of the “reformers” caused a similar defensive reaction from Zaydi youth. Against the Salafi proselytism of the international school Dar al-Hadith in Dammaj (near the Zaydi stronghold of Saada since the 9th century), the Zaydi intellectual elite created the “Shabab al-Mu’min” movement, which praised the historical role of Yemenis in Islam. It was led by former MP from Saada province, Sayyid Hussein al-Houthi (1959–2004), who gave lectures in 2001–2002 that formed the base of a new form of political Islam known as “Hussism.” It was a mix of theology and political theory, trying to explain the problems of the Muslim world and offer solutions. Its roots were in Zaydi theology. The idea of the “Qur’anic path” led by a spiritual leader — the ‘alam al-huda — aimed to rebuild unity in the Muslim community (ummah), combining ideas from different Sunni and Shia political movements and adding an element of Yemeni nationalism. Despite its originality, it had some similarities with Khomeinism, Salafism, the Muslim Brotherhood, nationalism, and other ideologies, making it a subject of criticism and speculation, even from other Zaydis. It focused on the civilizational injustice of global politics. In this teaching, takfirism was seen both as a distortion of Islamic values and a tool of US and Israeli (Zionist) policies to block a peaceful solution to the Palestinian issue. After the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Hussein al-Houthi saw this as a sign that the Arab-Muslim world should mobilize to defend itself from future invasions aimed at taking resources by removing identity. In domestic politics, the Houthi movement followed only legal methods: they called for removing the religious reform (and the Islah party) from state privileges, and excluding the security sector from US cooperation. This idea went against President Saleh’s policy of strategic partnership with the US, which started in 2001 when Yemen joined the global US-led counterterror campaign after 9/11. This partnership gave mixed results: it helped build anti-American feelings in society, even as it made Yemen seem more important regionally and gave Saleh’s relatives in the security agencies close contact with US partners. In 2004, President Saleh declared war on the Houthis after they refused to stop chanting their slogan in mosques in Sanaa: “Death to America! Death to Israel! Curse the Jews! Victory to Islam!” — which became a symbol of the movement and expressed its main ideas. The bloody and failed Saada wars of 2004–2010, and the death of their respected leader in 2004, weakened the regime and brought more armed tribes and other groups to join the Houthi resistance. This made them a strong local opposition force. A year before the peaceful uprising of 2011 that shook Saleh’s regime, the so-called “Houthi problem” had already become one of the country’s top national issues, next to the “southern question.” Experts described Yemen in the 1990s and 2000s as unstable. Many American political scientists saw it as a “fragile state,” a term used by the World Bank in the early 1990s. In the 2000s, Yemen gained the image of a global center of “terrorist threats” and became a testing ground for the military and political actions of US intelligence. The “fragile state” concept helped justify direct foreign intervention. At an international conference in London in January 2010 about Yemen, the focus was on security, not reform, as Yemenis had hoped. In 2011, Yemen became one of the key places hit by the wave of protests known as the “Arab Spring.” The idea of a “fragile state,” military spending, and the weakening of national sovereignty all led to the shift of conflicts into violent areas instead of using the democratic tools in the constitution. But the crisis in the relationship between society and the state, and among political actors, could also be seen as a natural immune response of a healthy cultural system — reacting to political problems: Islah still had support from the kingdom that backed the religious reform, while the US became more involved in Yemen’s security agencies despite public anger. Even though the protests in February 2011 were spontaneous and had no central leadership, they had the signs of a real social revolution. There were clear problems at both the top and bottom of society. The Yemeni revolution followed a unique peaceful transition plan — the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Initiative, launched on 23 November 2011 under the UN Secretary-General’s special envoy. The plan gave the task of creating a new constitution to an inclusive National Dialogue (ND) in Sanaa (March 2013 – January 2014), which showed that civil society was alive and strong in Yemen — something not possible in a truly “fragile state.” The organizers of the ND focused its agenda on the two key issues — the “southern question” and the “Houthi problem” — showing that internal Yemeni problems were the main priority in the transition. The only outside part of the plan was the proposed reform to decentralize and federalize the state, seen as a solution to these problems. A unique part of Yemen’s transition was that President Saleh remained head of the ruling party (GPC) even after officially handing over the presidency to his deputy — interim president Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi — in February 2012. An attack on Saleh in June 2011 turned the former partners and rivals — the GPC and Islah — into true enemies. This attack also left Islah’s leadership without support in 2014, as the Hashid tribal confederation (which included Saleh himself) no longer backed them. A new alliance formed in 2014, with the GPC and the Houthi movement “Ansar Allah,” combining “conservatives” and “revolutionaries.” This gave a political defeat to Islah, whose spiritual leader saw the revolution as the start of a coming caliphate. President Hadi signed the “Peace and National Partnership Agreement” on 21 September 2014, which the UN Security Council supported. It allowed him to shift his regime’s support from Islah to the new alliance and to form a new technocratic government under Khaled Bahah in December 2014. With this change, the foreign actors’ bets on Islah’s victory failed, and Ansar Allah became one of the expected winners of the transition, along with the GPC. Only in late January 2015 did interim president Hadi show signs of crisis by offering his resignation. But the UN envoy Jamal Benomar still believed in the peaceful plan until 24 March 2015, staying in the capital Sanaa, which was controlled by the new alliance, even after Hadi fled to the separatist-held city of Aden on 21 February 2015. The peaceful project fell apart dramatically in March 2015, and many actors offered different explanations. The idea of a “Houthi coup” (with no exact date) became official after the Arab Coalition launched its military intervention on 26 March 2015. This version was confirmed by UN Security Council resolutions and became part of the Yemeni discourse, now shaped more by the regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran than by Yemen’s own internal problems. Among the lessons of the transition process, along with proof of the effectiveness of the inclusive National Dialogue (ND), we can also point to the doubt it created about the expert community’s firm belief in decentralization and federalization of Yemen. The debate between Yemeni participants on this issue almost caused the conference to collapse, showing the deep disagreement between major Yemeni actors on how many federal regions there should be and how they should relate to the central government. Strong traditions of regionalism in the young Yemeni state raised real concerns that the result of this idea could be state collapse instead of unity (as seen in the countries the reform authors wanted to copy). By mid-2025, the Yemeni crisis (YC) had gone through four stages: two mentioned earlier — during President Saleh’s rule and the implementation of the Initiative — formed its internal (endogenous) stage; and two newer stages after the Arab Coalition (AC) intervention in March 2015 — the geopolitical (military) stage. The AC military campaign in Yemen lasted seven years before entering a phase of steady de-escalation in April 2022. The current “Palestinian” stage began in October 2023, when the YC shifted into a new kind of conflict — a combined armed conflict of supra-regional level (mixing regional and global elements). What makes it unique is its direct link to the situation in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (PIC) zone and Israel’s war in Gaza. The leading actors in this stage were first the US and the UK, who formed a naval coalition in December 2023 to stop anti-Israeli Houthi actions, and later Israel itself. We recall the prophetic comparison of the YC to a “ticking bomb” made in summer 2015 by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, warning that it could explode unless stopped early through political settlement. By summer 2025, the YC had absorbed not only unresolved internal problems but also several layers of subregional and regional issues, becoming a military-political “ticking bomb” for the whole region. Discussions about the cause of the YC’s new military phase range from security threats to shipping in the Red Sea by the Houthis and threats to Israel by the “Axis of Resistance” led by Iran, to opposing claims that the US and Israel are to blame for aggressive actions and blocking a legal settlement to the Gaza war. But for our study of the YC’s structure, another point is more important — the ongoing failure to resolve the YC during all its earlier stages, mostly due to outside geopolitical interference. The new stage stands out because the line between Yemen’s internal and external problems has disappeared. It is now part of a larger ethnic and religious conflict in another part of the region. Still, this link, through an ideological concept born in Yemen, does not feel artificial. Houthism, long under pressure since 2004, has now returned as a form of political will of the population — worn out by war but still determined. This fact again shows how unsuitable military methods are for solving the Yemeni conflict. Another unusual aspect of this new geopolitical stage is the inconsistent way the Houthis are labeled as international terrorists — depending on the mood of the US administration. Regional actors also switch between accepting and ignoring this label based on the situation. The accusation creates a legal problem regarding the status of the second major actor in Yemen’s ruling coalition — the core of the GPC party, which recognized the constitution and formed a government in Sanaa in August 2016. This unrecognized government controls about 30% of the territory, where more than 70% of Yemen’s population lives. The equal participation of Ansar Allah and the GPC in fully restored state institutions leaves open the question of how the US defines the GPC’s role in terrorism, especially since the party, led by ex-president Saleh, was a US partner for nearly 10 years before 2011. In the Supreme Political Council — the top body of the Sanaa government — there are 10 members, five from each group. The head of the council has always been from Ansar Allah, but the posts of prime minister, foreign minister, and some military and security positions were mostly held by GPC members. Another problem is linked to UN Security Council Resolution 2216, which demands the Houthis give up heavy weapons and leave Sanaa — in other words, surrender. But since the ruling coalition in Sanaa is joint, it is unclear whether the same demand applies to the GPC, which traditionally controlled the army and security services. There is no doubt about the status of the internationally recognized government (IRG), which is officially accepted, even by Russia — although Russia criticized Resolution 2216 during discussions and did not vote for it. Still, there is a question about the realism of demanding the Houthis hand over all weapons (meaning the arsenal collected during Saleh’s time) to Hadi’s government in exile, which was located entirely in a neighboring country with a complex past in its relations with Yemen. The main reasons the YC shifted to a new phase in October 2023 likely include: 1) the outdated UN framework for conflict resolution; 2) the limited and misleading use of the “proxy war” model to explain a complex conflict involving the AC, framing it only as a Saudi-Iranian proxy war; 3) the competition of many foreign powers for geopolitical influence in Yemen while ignoring Yemenis' own right to sovereignty. Before the transition of the YC to the "Palestinian" phase, two approaches to its settlement had formed in the discourse on YC — the official one (but non-functional) and the pragmatic one (but not acceptable to several internal, and especially external, powerful actors). The specific nature of this division, reflecting the mixed endogenously-geopolitical nature of YC itself, lies in the attempts by powerful interest groups behind them to implement incompatible approaches through the same permanent special mission appointed by the UN Secretary-General. The first approach was set by UN Security Council Resolution 2216 (April 2015), which formally became the legal basis for the UN mission’s work and focused on a military solution to the “Houthi problem” — applying pressure on the unrecognized regime in Sana'a until the Houthis surrendered completely. The second approach, which emerged almost immediately after the war began in March 2015, came from the expert community. It largely agreed with the criticism of Resolution 2216 voiced by the Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Security Council (2006–2017) V. I. Churkin and was based on an understanding of Yemeni realities rather than the wishes of foreign actors. It has long served as the practical guide for the current head of the UN mission in Yemen, Hans Grundberg, and includes two main elements: a) assisting in the prompt end of foreign military intervention in YC; and b) launching a comprehensive political peace process in an inclusive Yemeni format under UN auspices. This scenario gave a “green light,” in particular, to the Omani track and the de-escalation regime that began in April 2022. The UN mission and Russian diplomacy actively supported its progress at every stage. The de-escalation regime and the Omani track of direct talks between Riyadh and Sana'a on the terms of ending the war became the main outcome of the years-long war in Yemen and one of the most important achievements of the reform policy of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The new leader of the Kingdom began his involvement in YC as the commander of Operation “Decisive Storm” conducted by the AC, and in 2021–2022, thanks to him, Saudi Arabia became the initiator of the process to end the conflict based on its own model and using a regional format. Liberal reforms in Saudi Arabia, which affected the religious sphere starting in 2017, the threatening dynamics of the military conflict in Yemen, which hindered Saudi Arabia’s strategy to achieve leadership under the “Vision 2030” concept, and finally, the revision of approaches to the regional security system involving Iran — all came before this shift toward de-escalation in the YC zone. Its intellectual basis was a scholarly monograph published in 2022 by the respected King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies (KFCRIS) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia titled “The Houthi Movement in Yemen: Ideology, Ambitions, and Security.” Most of the articles were written by well-known representatives of various Western schools of Oriental studies and Yemeni research centers. They reached a common conclusion that the concept of “proxy” does not apply to the Yemeni Houthis. According to them, this very construct contributed more to the development of relations between the Sana'a regime and Iran and the “Axis of Resistance” during the war years than it reflected any prior allegiance to Tehran’s interests before the conflict began. The authors agreed that the roots of Houthism lie both in Yemeni history and traditions and in the distressing modern political situation in the Middle East after the September 11 attacks, which, in the view of Sayyid Hussein al-Houthi and his brother — Sayyid Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the current leader of Ansar Allah — was largely caused by US policy that threw the region into chaos. Of course, these “findings” in the monograph did not make the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Ansar Allah friendly, but removing the label of “enemy agent” from the movement allowed both sides to sit at the negotiating table and return the “Houthi problem” (among others) to the agenda of general YC settlement in the Yemeni format. The stable de-escalation regime received support from the UN mission but faced strong opposition from various competing centers of political influence (CPI), who feared losing status and were united in April 2022 into the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) headed by the new president of the MPP — Rashad al-Alimi. The United States also supported their discontent out of fear that regional actors might take over the initiative in the Yemeni settlement. US President Biden’s Special Representative for Yemen, Tim Lenderking (2021–2025), repeatedly spoke of the leading role of the US, indirectly blaming the UN mission for its support of the Oman talks. A telling example is his statement at the Foreign Affairs Committee hearings in December 2022: “The Houthis’ last-minute demand to direct limited oil export revenues, received by the Yemeni government, to pay salaries of active Houthi combatants, even though the Houthis refused to commit to a ceasefire, prevented the UN from concluding a new truce agreement between the parties in October… These actions are an insult to the entire international community and completely unacceptable. ” The two official visits exchanged between Riyadh and Sana’a in April and September 2023, after the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran with Beijing’s mediation in March, differed significantly in the atmosphere of negotiations: the enthusiasm clearly declined, increasing Sana’a’s uncertainty about the outcomes and timing. If the agreement on a "roadmap" within the framework of the Omani track — whose readiness was only announced by H. Grundberg on December 23, 2023 — had been reached earlier, a new escalation in YC might not have occurred at all or would have taken a much less aggressive form. The new stage of the military phase in YC covers the period from October 7, 2023, to May 6, 2025, and is divided into three phases. The de-escalation regime along the military contact line between AC and SA forces remained in effect, although in all other aspects of the process it noticeably deteriorated, pushing the humanitarian and economic situation to the brink of collapse. It should be noted that the initiative to link YC with the situation in the PIC zone came solely from the unrecognized regime in Sana’a and had nothing to do with the policy of Yemen’s official authorities — the MPP, which expressed itself in supporting resolutions of international summits, the Arab League (AL), and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), condemning Israel for the genocide of Gaza’s Palestinian population but prioritizing the goal of preventing conflict escalation. Many members of the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) sharply criticized the Houthis’ policy, describing them as a terrorist group, and their actions in the Red Sea against Israel as harmful to Yemen. This nuance should be taken into account, especially when encountering media headlines like “Yemen enters war with Israel,” which rather reflect the strong resonance of Sana’a’s policy in the Arab-Muslim world, coordinated with members of the so-called “Axis of Resistance.” The following refers specifically to the policy of the unrecognized regime — the initiator of the new stage. The push to move to a new phase in YC was triggered by the sudden raid of Hamas fighters on October 7 — “Al-Aqsa Flood” — and the large-scale, well-prepared Israeli army operation in Gaza “Iron Swords,” which led to near-total destruction of the city and raised the number of victims to about 9% of its population by June 2025. During the first phase from October 7 to December 18, 2023, the leaders of Ansar Allah took full control over shaping the domestic and foreign policy of the unrecognized Sana’a regime, achieving a significant breakthrough in unifying its ideological base on the Houthi doctrine. The Palestinian issue had already played a major role in the rhetoric of Ansar Allah leaders when condemning the military intervention in Yemen by Saudi Arabia and the UAE — which they called “unprovoked aggression,” staged by their common enemies — the US, Britain, and Israel (referred to as the “unholy trinity” in the regime’s rhetoric), aimed at preparing a strategic base in the Red Sea under the hostile New Middle East project. Now the topic of Palestine and Jerusalem became dominant. The solidarity campaign with the Palestinians under the name “Battle of the Promised Victory and the Holy Jihad” covered all areas of the unrecognized regime’s policy and filled the entire internal discourse. Weekly, well-organized mass marches with slogans from the Demonstration Organizing Committee, accompanied by public lectures and religious sermons by the movement’s leader Sayyid Abdul-Malik al-Houthi broadcast on screens, served as the official manifestation of the Yemeni people’s will and determination to stand firm in defending the rights of the Palestinian people. They included not only threats against enemies but also criticism of Arab and Islamic states’ policies for their “negligence,” and of the MPP, described as “anti-people.” In October–November 2023, the campaign of civilian solidarity with the people of Gaza was supplemented by military-political actions of the Houthi regime under the slogan directed to Hamas organizations, “You are not alone!” The unrecognized authorities blocked Israeli shipping through Bab-el-Mandeb, launched missiles toward the Israeli Red Sea port of Eilat, significantly disrupting its operations. At the same time, combat training courses were organized to prepare “hundreds of thousands of Yemenis” for voluntary entry into the war against Israel. Expressions of loyalty to the “leader of the revolution” — Sayyid Abdul-Malik al-Houthi — reached unprecedented levels, spreading across the military leadership at all levels. The head of the Supreme Political Council (SPC) of the Sana’a regime, Mahdi al-Mashat, emphasized that the countermeasures he introduced against Israel were tied exclusively to the war and blockade in the Gaza Strip, with no intention to obstruct freedom of navigation through the Bab-el-Mandeb strait for other companies and ships. Overall, the ban affected about 1–1.5% of the cargo flow. The second phase, from December 18, 2023, to January 19, 2025, covers the conduct of the “Poseidon Archer” military operation with the participation of the US-UK Maritime Coalition (USUKMC) during the Biden administration. In a joint statement from the US government and several of its partners dated January 3, 2024, referring to attacks on about 10 cargo ships using around 100 drones from Yemen’s shores, it stated: “... the attacks threaten the lives of innocent people around the world and pose a serious international problem requiring collective action. Nearly 15% of global maritime trade passes through the Red Sea, including 8% of global grain trade, 12% of maritime oil trade, and 8% of liquefied natural gas. International shipping companies continue to reroute their vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, resulting in significant costs and weeks-long delays in deliveries, ultimately putting at risk the transportation of essential food, fuel, and humanitarian aid worldwide. Let our message be clear: we call for an immediate end to these illegal attacks and the release of unlawfully detained ships and crews. The Houthis will be held accountable for the consequences if they continue to threaten lives, the global economy, and the free movement of trade along key regional waterways.” The strikes launched by USUKMC on January 11, 2024, aimed to “restore freedom of navigation” through the strait and deprive Sana’a of the military capability to continue its ship attacks. Israel was not mentioned, but within Yemen, the openly pro-Israel orientation of the campaign against the Sana’a alliance (SA) seriously complicated the MPP’s position. The operation ended on January 19, 2025, without achieving its objectives, following Biden’s departure from the presidency. U.S. partners in the EU and the region refused to operate under U.S. command. The EU’s “Aspides” operation focused on covering and escorting merchant ships. Among the Gulf countries, only Bahrain participated in the US-UK Maritime Coalition (USUKMC), providing a base for U.S. and British fleets and CENTCOM’s command headquarters. The U.S. invoked Article 51 of Chapter VII “Action with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression” of the UN Charter (the right of self-defense) to justify its aggression in Yemen. The legal side of the USUKMC operation was extensively criticized by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Security Council, V.A. Nebenzya. In his detailed letter to UN members dated January 22, 2024, he presented Russia’s position, describing the actions of the U.S. and Britain as a blatant violation of international law and a threat to peace. Russia did not support the Houthi threats to navigation but, amid the even more explosive situation in Gaza — which the Houthi countermeasures aimed to contain — proposed that both issues be resolved simultaneously through balanced, comprehensive solutions. This approach was also shared by most regional actors, who were primarily concerned about threats to shipping posed by the USUKMC military campaign in the Red Sea itself. According to the 2024 annual report of the Suez Canal Authority, revenue from ship traffic fell by 60%, depriving Egypt of about $7 billion (compared to a 2–3% drop before the formation of the “Guardian” coalition). Almost every quarter during the military phase of the “Palestinian” stage, the Houthis demonstrated new types of weapons and improved tactics for attacking maritime targets, including both commercial and military ships of the U.S. and Britain, which were added to Sana’a’s blacklist after the aggression began. This development triggered threats toward Iran, accused of supplying weapons to the Houthis while bypassing all checkpoints established since March 2015 — long controlled by the U.S. and British navies. On July 20, 2024, Israeli aviation joined the USUKMC “Archer” operations — one day after a Yemeni drone exploded in Tel Aviv. In the second half of the year, Israel launched three more attacks, coordinated with USUKMC combat operations. Meanwhile, strikes on Israeli territory from Yemen intensified. From October 2023 to mid-January 2025, Sana’a media reported 92 air raids on various targets in Israel, including the Haifa port on the Mediterranean (jointly with Iraqi resistance forces) and Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv. During this period, the Houthis also attacked 24 Israeli ships. They carried out 78 combat operations against the U.S. Navy, attacked 30 American commercial vessels, and 13 British ships. Attacks on Israeli territory involved cruise and ballistic missiles, some with hypersonic capabilities that pierced Israel’s defense systems, as well as large numbers of drones. According to incomplete data, during the first year of the “Archer” operation, USUKMC launched 1,200 strikes on Yemen. The combat experience gained by U.S. forces in the war with Yemen in the Red and Arabian Seas was recognized by many experts as instructive, becoming a subject of close study of a conflict in which drones worth up to $20,000 were countered by air defense missiles costing $1–4.5 million each. The change of administrations in the White House triggered a pause in the Gaza war on January 19, 2025, and a simultaneous halt in Houthi attacks on all ships in the Red and Arabian Seas. However, the arrival of President Trump was accompanied by a major escalation of the U.S. military operation, which was named “Furious Rider.” Trump's designation of the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) on January 22, 2025, coincided with the pause in hostilities and contradicted the call from UN mission head H. Grundberg for a full ceasefire in the Red Sea, citing Yemen’s dire humanitarian situation. At the UN Security Council briefing on February 13, 2025, he began his speech with a call for deescalation. However, on March 15, 2025, the U.S. resumed heavy bombing of Yemen just before the truce in Gaza collapsed due to Israeli actions. The Washington Times wrote: “President Trump warned the Iran-backed terrorist group that it must stop all attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, or ‘you will face a hell like you’ve never seen before.’” The new wave of daily, unprecedentedly intense strikes on Yemen under the “Furious Rider” operation continued from March 15 to May 6, 2025. The beginning of the operation was marked by a loud political scandal — “Signalgate” — related to the leak of confidential information about the planned U.S. military operation in Yemen. The leak was published in an article by The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who had accidentally joined a messenger chat created by National Security Secretary Mike Watts, who was later dismissed over the incident. The operation involved the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75), which lost three F-18 jets in multiple incidents, each valued at $67 million. The U.S. also lost over a dozen heavy MQ-9 Reaper drones, each worth $30 million, shot down over Yemen. The cost of the U.S. operation in Yemen is estimated at around $7 billion. In late April 2025, British aircraft rejoined the “Rider” operation. On May 5, Israeli aircraft carried out its first large-scale strike of the campaign on sensitive infrastructure and residences of Ansar Allah’s political and military leaders, continuing attacks even after President Trump declared the operation over. At an investment forum in Riyadh in mid-May, the American president gave the following comment on his decision: “In recent weeks, after repeated attacks on American ships and on the freedom of navigation in the Red Sea, the U.S. military carried out more than 1,100 strikes on the Houthis in Yemen. As a result, the Houthis agreed to stop. They said, ‘We don’t want this anymore.’ You’re hearing this from them for the first time. They’re tough guys, they’re fighters. But just a few days ago, we asked them to stop attacking commercial ships. They had no intention whatsoever of targeting trade vessels or anything American, and they were very happy that we stopped. But we had 52 days of thunder and lightning like they’d never seen before. It was fast, fierce, decisive, and an extremely successful use of military force. Not that we wanted it, but they were hitting ships. They were firing at you. They were firing at Saudi Arabia. We were not.” The prospects for further development of the YC remain unpredictable. The linkage of YC with the PIC remains in effect. YC has transitioned into a format of direct confrontation between SA and Israel. A new war front was opened by Israel's attack on Iran on January 13, 2025, and the twelve-day war that followed — ending with a U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities and Iran’s retaliatory strike on a U.S. Air Force base in Qatar — sparked Sana’a’s willingness to support Iran while continuing to tie YC to the situation in Gaza and maintain the blockade of Israeli shipping through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait. Russia’s position throughout all phases of the second stage of the military phase was consistently focused on political resolution of YC. On May 14, 2025, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN, V.A. Nebenzya, stated that during the nearly two-month confrontation between the U.S. and the Houthis, the death toll had exceeded 200 people, with several hundred more injured. Strikes were carried out almost nightly on the territory of sovereign Yemen, targeting not only military but also civilian infrastructure, with no result — neither the suppression of Ansar Allah’s military capabilities nor their abandonment of their course of action. Welcoming the cessation of U.S. attacks on Yemen, the Russian envoy remarked: “Better late than never, as the saying goes. It seems that Washington has finally acknowledged the futility of the military approach, something we have pointed out repeatedly… This could have been a first step toward general de-escalation around Yemen. But unfortunately, it is not yet the case, because Israel has now begun relay-style bombardments of Yemen.” The U.S.-UK coalition’s military campaign in Yemen bore all the hallmarks of a large-scale neocolonial military adventure. It immediately took the form of a demonstration of military superiority, hardly differing in method or tactics from earlier AC operations, when nearly 250,000 strikes were launched on Yemen from March 2015 to April 2022. The USUKMC's failures to organize a ground operation — necessary for military victory — also echoed past lessons. The AC’s refusal to participate in favor of maintaining the de-escalation regime, and the conditional agreement by Yemeni CPIs in the MPP to join only if supplied with U.S. arms (thus endangering their patrons from the AC), yielded no results. Moreover, the Palestinian backdrop of the new phase raised the risk that all of the accumulated military power of SA’s enemies might eventually pivot against Israel’s allies. The second stage of the geopolitical phase of the crisis cannot be considered fully complete, yet it may transform into a third one if Israel attempts to seize the initiative. * Organization designated as terrorist and banned in the Russian Federation.References:Bokov T.A. The Yemeni Houthi Movement: Causes of Origin, Formation and Development. Dissertation abstract. St. Petersburg, 2023. P. 162.In January 2021, outgoing president D. Trump designated the Houthis as an international terrorist group, which was reversed by incoming president J. Biden in February. In January 2024, the group was re-designated, and Trump began his new term in January 2025 by raising the threat level of the Houthis to a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” (FTO).The Huthi Movement in Yemen: Ideology, Ambition and Security in the Arab Gulf / Abdullah Hamidaddin. London: I.B. Tauris, 2022.The book’s editor was Dr. Abdullah Hamidaddin, Assistant Secretary General of the Center. Contributors included B. Haykel (Princeton), M. Brandt (ISA, Austria), E. Ardemagni (ISPI, Italy), among others.The same article served as the legal reference for launching the AC’s “Decisive Storm” operation in March 2015.United Nations S/2024/90 Security Council Distr.: General 22 January 2024 — Letter dated 22 January 2024 from the Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council.MQ-9 Reaper — remotely piloted UAV, medium-altitude and long-endurance. Primarily used for reconnaissance, surveillance, targeting, and strikes.

Diplomacy
iran and china flags on gears, gas rig model between them, gas transit from iran to china

China in the Middle East: Geoeconomic Challenges in a High-Tension Region, from Tehran to Tel Aviv

by Kambiz Zare

In the Middle East, China seeks to appear neutral by engaging in dialogue with all actors, from Tehran to Tel Aviv, including Riyadh. Beijing's objective is clear: to establish itself as a guarantor of stability to secure its energy and commercial interests. The People's Republic of China's (PRC) commitment to the Middle East reflects a carefully calibrated geostrategic approach, aiming to preserve regional stability, ensure uninterrupted access to energy resources, and promote its famous Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also known as the 'New Silk Roads.' In this region, the Sino-Iranian relationship is most often highlighted due to its political weight and military dimension; however, whether in economic, diplomatic, or strategic terms, Beijing's presence in this area certainly extends beyond its ties with Tehran. As elsewhere in the world, in the Middle East, China divides its diplomatic partnerships into several types, listed here in descending order of intensity: "global strategic partnerships" (in the Middle East: Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain); "strategic partnerships" (Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Syria, Turkey, and the Palestinian Authority); "friendly cooperation partnerships" (Lebanon and Yemen); and finally, "innovative global partnerships" (Israel). China is redefining its priorities in the Middle East  Energy dependence is one of the essential drivers of China's policy in the region. Gulf countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait, are among the main suppliers of crude oil to the PRC—well ahead of Iran in terms of volume, as well as reliability and investment opportunities. This economic reality compels China to invest much more heavily in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, where financial stability, political predictability, and institutional openness promote sustainable strategic partnerships and infrastructure development, unlike in Iran. For these reasons, the Gulf countries have indirectly become essential nodes in the architecture of the BRI through trade, receiving nearly six times more Chinese investments than Iran. Although Iran has geographical interest as a potential corridor between China and Europe, the persistent effect of international sanctions, poor economic management, and regional adventurism severely limit its ability to attract sustainable Chinese investments. In contrast, Israel offers a functioning and favorable environment for investors, making it a preferred destination for Chinese capital and infrastructure projects. Its economy is based on solid infrastructure and a dynamic technology sector. Despite geopolitical shocks, including the recent clashes with Iran – which will undoubtedly impact the country's business environment – Israel, as a member of the OECD, remains attractive in terms of business environment and investment, mainly because the foundations of its economic environment are stronger than those of Iran or Saudi Arabia. The Hebrew state occupies an increasing place within the BRI – not due to the volume of Chinese direct investments, but because of its strategic position and ambitious infrastructure agenda. Its geographical location – straddling Europe, Asia, and Africa via the Mediterranean – makes it a key land and maritime connectivity point that provides an alternative option to Iran for linking China to Europe. In this context, China and Israel have made progress in their negotiations for a free trade agreement that has been discussed since 2016. Although discussions have been suspended since 2023, there remains hope that an agreement could be signed once stability returns to the region. China's trade with Israel and Iran: divergent trajectories China's commercial relations with Israel and Iran reveal two distinct economic approaches.  With Israel, trade is increasingly marked by imports of high technologies - particularly in the semiconductor field - reflecting a growing technological interdependence.  In contrast, trade with Iran remains focused on industrial goods and natural resources, illustrating a more traditional partnership based on access to raw materials. These contrasting dynamics reflect China's strategic flexibility, which relies on Israeli innovation while securing its supplies from Iran.  Tensions in the Strait of Hormuz are testing China's strategy in Iran  For nearly fifty years, Iran has turned to China for economic support. However, despite 21 Chinese greenfield investment projects between 2003 and 2020 – mainly in the energy sector – Beijing has gradually begun to disengage due to international sanctions and ongoing regional instability. Large companies such as CNPC and Sinopec have reduced their stake, or even abandoned some projects, while tech companies like Huawei and Lenovo have also scaled back their presence in the Iranian market. Between 2017 and 2019, Iran reportedly saw an outflow of Chinese capital estimated at $990 million. China views instability in the Middle East, particularly the confrontation between Israel and Iran, as a direct threat to its economic and commercial interests. As the world's largest buyer of Iranian oil, China is especially concerned about potential disruptions in strategic maritime routes, particularly the Strait of Hormuz. In June 2025, Chinese oil imports from Iran significantly increased, reaching up to 1.8 million barrels per day – a surge that occurred just before the military escalation between Israel and Iran, which raised concerns about the security of the Strait of Hormuz. A sign of the weight of the PRC in this region: after the reciprocal airstrikes between Israel and Iran, and Tehran's threat to close this crucial passage, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged Beijing to intervene, emphasizing China's heavy dependence on this oil route. China–United States: strategic tensions in a transitioning Middle East China and the United States recently signed a trade agreement and established a 90-day tariff truce, aiming to resolve some key disputes and stabilize economic relations. Furthermore, on the military front, Iran and China signed a military cooperation agreement as early as 2016, reflecting their mutual desire to counter American influence in the region and secure trade routes. Historically, China has supported Iran through arms sales, technology transfers, and training programs. Moreover, despite the official rhetoric, some reports suggest that Chinese technologies have contributed to the development of Iran's ballistic program. The Sino-Iranian relationship in defense illustrates a two-level diplomacy: China discreetly supports Iran's military autonomy while ensuring it does not compromise its strategic relationships with other important regional partners, including Israel, with whom it also maintains top-level security dialogues. This highlights Beijing's broader ambition: to avoid regional polarizations and maintain a balance of power favorable to its interests. China's strategy in the Middle East towards the United States is based on a principle of equidistance: to increase its influence without direct confrontation, while drawing strategic benefits from Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iran, and Egypt. In this perspective, the People's Republic of China does not seek to replace the United States as the dominant power in the region, but rather to offer a multipolar presence focused on preserving stability. Maintaining the status quo, avoiding direct conflicts, and building a parallel system of influence through infrastructure, trade, and diplomacy are the pillars of China's position in the Middle East. This approach ensures Beijing secure access to energy, trade corridors, and sustainable geopolitical influence from Tel Aviv to Tehran.