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      Armenia and Azerbaijan Clash Again

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      The on-again, off-again conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the border region of Nagorno-Karabakh became hot again on the weekend of July 11. Skirmishes are common in the contested region, which is known as Artsakh to the Armenian side, but this recent round of deadly attacks is the most serious escalation since the Four Day War in 2016 and is outside the typical point of contact. As usual, international calls for restraint and a diplomatic solution have been voiced, but internal politics between the two sides continue to amplify their serious disagreements. It seems as though the situation will continue to escalate, but the current circumstances are unlikely to spark a full-scale confrontation.

      As in the case of other post-Soviet frozen conflicts — as well as land disputes in the North Caucasus — the dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh is intrinsically linked to the early history of the 20th century. Shifts of power resultant from the loss of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, the collapse of the Russian Empire and the territorial delineations configured in the formative days of the Soviet Union and its subsequent break-up created borders that did not appease all sides of the local populations. Nagorno-Karabakh has an ethnic Armenian majority, but political maneuvering in the 1920s handed its jurisdiction, and thus international recognition, to Azerbaijan. Armenia continued to voice its discontent over this arrangement, but matters of borders and ethnicity remained contained while the territories were part of a wider empire with one central government.

      As the Soviet Union neared its end, the question of Nagorno-Karabakh reemerged as Karabakh Armenians sought the reconnection of the territory with Armenia proper. Subsequent political actions, including an unofficial referendum and a petition to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to sanction the territorial transfer, infuriated the Azeri public. In 1988, the Nagorno-Karabakh War officially broke out just as inter-ethnic relations deteriorated, killing between 20,000 and 30,000 people. A further referendum in 1991, boycotted by Azerbaijan, quashed the prior plea to join Armenia in favor of the pursuit of independence for Nagorno-Karabakh. Fighting escalated to the point that both Armenia and Azerbaijan accused each other of ethnic cleansing. It was at this point that the international community turned its attention to the regional conflict in the South Caucasus.

      Contemporary Crisis

      In 1994, the Russian Federation mediated a ceasefire between Armenia, Azerbaijan and the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh (as of 2017, officially the Republic of Artsakh). For the most part, this agreement has kept hostilities contained, minus the ongoing instances of low-level clashes and explicit violations by both sides. For example, the Four Day War in April 2016 witnessed Azerbaijan regain “two strategic hills, a village, and a total of about 2,000 hectares.” Nonetheless, Armenia has not fulfilled concessions required by UN Security Council resolutions, such as the withdrawal of its troops, leaving Azerbaijan perpetually frustrated.

      There has been a continued push for engagement and peace talks by the international community, primarily the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe’s (OSCE) Minsk Group, chaired by Russia, France and the United States, since 1992. Still, there are no official relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan as a result, and it has been difficult to breathe life into peace talks in a decades-long conflict.

      It is unclear what exactly sparked the current round of hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan, but both sides blame the other for the escalation. The heightened tensions came only days after Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, declared that peace talks to resolve the conflict had essentially have stalled. One key difference between the current situation and those in the past is that the deadly encounter between forces did not occur directly in Nagorno-Karabakh, but rather in the northern Tavush section of the Armenian border.

      On July 12, the Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan announced that Armenia launched an offensive that consequently killed two Azerbaijani servicemen and left five others wounded. In retaliation, Azeri forces launched a counterstrike, setting the scene for yet another protracted spat. Attacks have continued almost on a daily basis since the outbreak of the current impasse, and there have been numerous reports of shelling, tank movements and the use of combat unmanned aerial vehicles and grenade launchers.

      While actions on the ground may be dramatic, they remain at a low level. On the other hand, authorities in Armenia and Azerbaijan up the ante through heightened threats and verbal tit-for-tats. This is typical of ethnic spats that rely heavily on nationalist rhetoric to amplify cohesive public support for military actions, whether offensive or defensive. In a case of a highly provocative statement that should raise eyebrows, the head of Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Defense press service stated that “The Armenian side should not forget that the latest missile systems, which are in service with our army, allow hitting the Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant with high precision, which can lead to a huge catastrophe for Armenia.”

      A retort by the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted that such possible violations of international law are “an explicit demonstration of state terrorism and genocidal intent of Azerbaijan” as well as “leadership of Azerbaijan acts as a menace to all the peoples of the region, including its own people.”

      Too Late for Diplomacy?

      After 30 years of a tense and barely tolerated relationship, it seems unlikely that any political or diplomatic solution will result from this latest round of tensions. Indeed, a significant diplomatic effort has been expended to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and wider disputes between Armenia and Azerbaijan to no avail. At this time, it is simply enough that the sides generally adhere to the 1994 ceasefire and engage with the Minsk Group. For instance, the OSCE institution released a press statement that the belligerents of the conflict must “resume substantive negotiations as soon as possible and emphasize the importance of returning OSCE monitors to the region as soon as circumstances allow.”

      International voices have all chimed in and called for restraint by both Armenia and Azerbaijan. Besides being a co-chair for the Minsk Group, Russia is understandably concerned about the clashes in its neighborhood. Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko reiterated sentiments similar to the OSCE, calling on “both parties to immediately ceasefire and start negotiations in order to prevent a recurrence of these incidents.” On the other hand, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu called on Armenia to “pull its head together” and subsequently expressed that “Whatever solution Baku prefers for the occupied lands and Karabakh, we will stand by Azerbaijan.”

      The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh consequently slammed the Turkish position, condemned the destabilizing actions of Azerbaijan in the Tavush region, and echoed the need to return to the OSCE table. With numerous political actors and geopolitical interests at play, the fight over such a small but strategically important swathe of land becomes much more complex once compounded by the factors of ethnicity, history and national pride.

      Embed from Getty Images

      But it seems unlikely that the current situation will transition into another full-scale war. Rather, it is fair to assume that actions on the ground could escalate for the short term, but any protracted operation would be a serious regional blow to civilian populations and the energy sector. The Nagorno-Karabakh War of 1988-1994 displaced some 860,000 on both sides, and a similar outcome is possible today, with skirmishes occurring in populated areas.

      Secondly, the Armenia-Azerbaijan borderlands are important transit points for oil and gas pipelines. Entities and media that follow energy markets have already raised concerns over the current fighting and how it may influence the flow of hydrocarbons. The ongoing situation around Tavush province is certainly more serious because it is closer to the South Caucasian Pipeline (SCP) that runs from the Azeri capital Baku to Tbilisi, Georgia, and then Erzurum, in Turkey. Furthermore, the SCP is part of the wider Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) and Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) — a network set to deliver gas to Europe upon completion later this year. These factors will obviously be taken into consideration by Azerbaijan’s strategists as they move forward with their plans in the region. It would be short-sighted to destabilize this network when diplomatic options are at hand to at least keep the status quo for the sake of business.

      Additionally, the South Caucasus is a busy neighborhood, geopolitically speaking. In the case that the situation escalates and interests are at risk, one could expect greater involvement from Russia and Turkey. Although the Turkish Foreign Ministry gave a statement in strong support of Baku, it does not mean that Ankara would be willing to send forces. Moscow has little taste for engagement in a military operation either. Further, even the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) — a military alliance composed of countries from the Commonwealth of Independent States, including Armenia and Russia — promote a political solution rather than a military one. The international community and organizations openly promote a return to the Minsk Group’s negotiation table and, ideally, this will be the immediate result of the ongoing skirmishes.

      The clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan are likely to continue in the short term just as their non-existent diplomatic relations will endure without the political will for an inclusive political solution. Tavush province has taken the spotlight between the foes right now, but the recent occurrences are being widely viewed as the greater Nagorno-Karabakh conflict due to the proximity and the historical antagonism over the border. While it is unfortunate that cross-border shelling and conflict has attracted international interest to the South Caucasus yet again, it is not unexpected as matters never really settle to a level of peaceful monotony in the region.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Hosting Refugees and Migrants Is a Global Public Good

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      On June 20, we celebrated World Refugee Day. This was an opportune time for us all to pay attention to the challenge of forced displacement today. Strikingly, the world is facing the largest forced displacement crisis since World War II, with nearly 80 million people having fled their countries because of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations or events that have seriously disturbed public order. All continents now face forced displacement crises, and migratory problems cross state and community boundaries.

      Forced displacement has hit Latin American and Caribbean countries particularly hard, highlighting existing vulnerabilities such as increased levels of violence and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic. Latin America is now home to one of the largest forced displacement crises in the world. As of March 2020, more than 5 million Venezuelans were reportedly living outside of their country, with 4 million of them in other Latin American countries: Colombia (1.8 million), Peru (1 million), and Ecuador and Chile (for a total of 1 million).

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      Since the beginning of the Venezuelan crisis, most Latin American nations have tried to accommodate these recent arrivals, providing migrants with basic education, emergency health care services and legal status. These neighboring countries have provided a global public good by hosting millions at the risk of overwhelming their services and systems. But how will these nations be able to withstand the pressure?

      Hosting countries face the new challenge of integrating larger numbers of migrants and refugees while dealing with the effects of the coronavirus outbreak. When taking into account that more than 60% of Venezuelan migration in Latin American countries is irregular and targets the most vulnerable populations, this crisis is now becoming a question of public health and safety and, ultimately, of regional security. It is time for the international community to provide a collective response that matches the magnitude of the crisis.

      A first step was taken on May 26, with the virtual — livestreamed on YouTube — pledging conference for Venezuelan refugees and migrants that helped raise $2.79 billion in total commitments. This included $653 million of grant funding for the Refugee and Migrant Response Plan, which is a United Nations’ appeal to largely address the emergency needs of the migrant population.

      The situation in Latin America calls for enhanced international support across the humanitarian-development nexus. In other words, the response should address pressing immediate needs —such as temporary shelter and emergency medical services — as well as the medium and long-term imperative of economic and social development through institutions, resilient local systems and service delivery. This is precisely what Colombian President Ivan Duque called for when advocating the shift from “emergency response to medium and long-term development and integration.”

      Five Priorities

      To help countries mitigate the impact of the crisis and charter a pathway to growth and stability, there are five development priorities to focus on.  

      Embed from Getty Images

      First, new ways should be explored to provide regular status to refugees and migrants, including through targeted regularization or employment-based programs. There have been several efforts to provide regular status to recent refugees and migrants arriving from Venezuela.

      Colombia, Peru and now Ecuador stand out for their ambitious regularization programs for hundreds of thousands of irregular refugees and migrants. Amid rising public anxieties over migration in some countries, it may become harder to implement such mass regularization programs or offer regular status to most who seek to enter. The approach followed by Colombia in providing regular status to those who have employment in specific sectors may provide another alternative. Similarly, Peru has been trying to regularize students in the country’s educational system — another strategy that Colombia and Ecuador seem likely to adopt in the future and one that may prove more politically viable in some countries.

      Yet these approaches risk leaving out the vast majority of recent refugees and migrants who do not attend school or work in the formal economy, or the families of those who do benefit from such measures. Policymakers should, therefore, be thinking about the medium and long-term effects where providing legal status to refugees and migrants would produce optimal labor market outcomes — for themselves and the country overall. The details of implementation in each case will matter enormously, but there is room for reiterative efforts that focus on specific different groups over time. 

      Second, health care barriers should be tackled through clear policies on access and financing. Almost all countries in the region, at least in theory, offer emergency health care to immigrants regardless of regular status. Still, specific policies are often unclear, and measures are not always implemented effectively at the local level, which means that migrants often have difficulties accessing health care in practice. In countries where local and regional governments pay part of health-care costs, financial burden sharing is also often unclear, leading local hospitals to cover costs that may never get reimbursed.

      Creating clear policies and procedures defining both the services offered and what amount of costs will be covered and by whom are critical. In some countries, such as Colombia, Peru and Costa Rica, where residents need to enroll in the health care system to be eligible for benefits, it is vital to find agile ways of ensuring that new immigrants can register and sometimes to find ways of covering the costs of their care.

      Third, access to education should be improved through flexible enrollment practices and ongoing support. One of the most critical decisions of countries has been to offer primary and secondary education to all students regardless of their status. In some countries, this was already embedded in the constitution, but others have more recently adopted these measures.

      This helps avoid a generation of young people growing up without education and supports receiving countries to take advantage of the potential human capital of immigrant children who will likely grow up in their territory. In many places, however, strict registration requirements involving documents that are difficult for migrants and refugees to obtain can prevent some from enrolling their children in school.

      There is also an urgent need to work with schools on policies, procedures and curricula to facilitate the integration of Venezuelan children, who may face challenges adapting to their new schools and need additional support to develop critical skills (e.g., history, culture and other country-specific knowledge). In several countries, access to college, graduate education and trade schools is also restricted for those who do not have adequate documentation, which risks wasting the human capital of immigrant youth who aspire to enter professional and technical careers, including in fields that are in demand in their new countries.

      Fourth, migrants’ skills should be unlocked to boost labor market integration and local economies. The majority of Venezuelan adults suitable for paid work in countries across the region were already working before COVID-19. In fact, more than 90% of Venezuelan migrants in Peru and 8 in 10 Venezuelan migrants in Colombia were employed before the pandemic. While recognizing that the labor markets of many countries in the region are characterized by a high degree of informality, care should be taken to ensure that immigrants do have pathways to better-paid and more stable employment in the formal economy and to avoid creating conditions where employers can pay immigrants less than the prevailing wage, to the detriment of both newcomer and native-born workers.

      There is no more important determinant for long-term positive labor market outcomes than ensuring regular status, which helps immigrant workers improve their wages over time and also helps avoid unfair wage competition between native-born and Venezuelan workers. Refugees and migrants tend to be relatively well-educated, which means that there is a wealth of highly skilled human capital that could benefit receiving countries.

      To effectively leverage this potential, countries will need to create agile ways for immigrants to get professional and technical degrees earned in their home countries validated and recognized by employers. Argentina has done this through provincial universities, which has allowed the country to encourage professionals to leave the capital and settle in other provinces where their skills are in demand. Creating expedited credential recognition pathways for applicants willing to settle in an area of the country where their skills are most needed could also help fill labor market gaps.

      Fifth, constructive narratives about immigration should be developed to highlight opportunities while not ignoring its challenges. There is no question that the sudden outflow of 5 million Venezuelans constitutes a migration crisis, and one that host countries are keenly aware of. But this migration is also an opportunity for host countries, as illustrated by increased predictions by the World Bank of regional future economic growth as Venezuelan immigration drives labor market expansion.

      Immigrants, when they have access to legal status, education, health care, financial services and pathways to validate their studies, tend to become net contributors to innovation, entrepreneurship and economic growth over time. Several governments in the region have gone out of their way to maintain their focus on these long-term opportunities, even while dealing with the challenges that the sudden arrival of so many people creates for already overburdened public services. Policymakers require assistance to orient the public debate on migration by keeping an eye on the medium and long-term benefits (and designing policies to help attain them). Still, they must also acknowledge the real strains involved in dealing with sudden, large-scale inflows.

      Inclusive Development

      Multilateral support will be critical in helping countries in the region meet these policy challenges. While migration from Venezuela holds the potential to enhance economic growth in the long term, it is also creating real and tangible short-term costs for already overburdened schools, hospitals and infrastructure. Multilateral support can help countries of the region overcome these challenges and reap immigration’s benefits.

      Embed from Getty Images

      This requires moving from emergency responses to long-term development and integration. While there is still a critical need for emergency services for recently-arrived migrants from Venezuela, as crises in these countries stretch on, it is also important to plan for the medium and the long term. The most important question in the future will be how to support inclusive development that can help host communities and immigrants build connections and improve their livelihoods together. Enhancing access to and quality of schools, health care facilities, housing and urban infrastructure in areas where migrants settle is vital. This is the key to successful integration and also an opportunity to turn a migration crisis into a net benefit for host societies.

      While there is some need for temporary shelter and emergency medical services that international actors could help meet, the greatest needs for support have to do with building local capacity for integration and service provision both to new arrivals and long-time residents. For this, multilateral organizations like the World Bank should continue to be actively engaged in helping better manage the forced displacement crisis, in support of its mission to reduce poverty and contribute to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

      *[The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect the views of The World Bank, its Board of Executive Directors or the governments they represent. The World Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this work.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Two Deaths Raise the Specter of Lynching in California

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      On the morning of June 10, 2020, the body of a young black man, Robert Fuller, was found hanging from a tree in a park opposite City Hall in Palmdale, California. The police initially ruled the death a suicide. Suspicions were raised though when the body of a 38-year-old homeless African American man was discovered hanging from a tree in Victorville, a town some 50 miles south of Palmdale. Again, the police initially ruled the death to have been a suicide. A coincidence? Since these deaths occurred in the middle of nationwide Black Lives Matter protests, it seems hard not to be suspicious. The FBI has now entered the case.

      Racially-motivated lynching was a primarily Southern and border-state phenomenon. The Tuskegee Institute’s database records some hundreds of these murders in the decades following Reconstruction. Until American entry into World War II in 1941, Southern mobs killed dozens of black people during the Depression decade. Since Congress was dominated by Southern legislators, bills seeking to make lynching a federal crime failed to be enacted into law. Astonishingly, this continues to be the case as of June 2020.

      Out of Fashion

      Despite violent Southern resistance to racial integration during the postwar civil rights era, between approximately 1958 and 1970, lynching went out of style. Race-based bombings and shootings took its place. Out of fashion but not out of mind. For example, on occasion, nooses were found in the lockers of newly hired African American policemen and firemen when they seemed to be breaking long-standing racial barriers in these professions.

      This brings us to Palmdale. Palmdale and the adjacent town of Lancaster are located about 35 miles northeast of Los Angeles in the Antelope Valley, on the edges of the Mojave Desert. These communities are close to Edwards Air Force Base, the site of flight-testing of advanced fighter planes during the Cold War — the early sequences in the film “The Right Stuff” were located at Edwards. Rents and housing prices are somewhat lower than those in Los Angeles. Palmdale-Lancaster attracts largely lower-middle-class residents who don’t mind living in a high desert environment surrounded by Joshua trees and tumbleweed. In recent years, these communities have attracted a growing number of African American families for the same reasons that drew whites to the area.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Palmdale-Lancaster has a political history that draws our attention. During the postwar era, John Wesley Swift, initially a follower of the Reverend Gerald L.K. Smith, a prominent anti-Semitic preacher, founded his own church in Lancaster in 1948. Like Smith, Swift toured southern California seeking to revive the Ku Klux Klan in the Los Angeles area and beyond. The effort met with some success: A cross was burned near Big Bear Lake shortly after Swift’s visit. Swift also played a major role in the formation of the California Anti-Communist League and the equally racist and anti-Semitic Christian National Crusade.

      Our interest in Swift’s ecclesiastical career is based on the fact he was crucial in the transformation of what had been British-Israelism — a religious doctrine that asserted British people were the descendants of the 10 lost tribes of Israel — into the new postwar American religion of identity. From his church in Lancaster, Swift preached that the Jews were the “seed of Satan” and that people of color were sub-human “mud people” who should be deported from North America and returned to their countries of origin in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa.

      One of Swift’s congregants at his church in Lancaster was Richard Girnt Butler, an engineer working at a Lockheed Aircraft facility in the area. Michael Barkun, in “Religion and the Racist Right,” reports that Butler found Swift’s sermons electrifying and quickly became an adherent of the new religion: “He [Swift] was the total turning point in my life. The light turned on. He had the answers I was trying to find.”  

      Of Particular Interest

      In 1973, Butler left Swift and his Lancaster church behind and formed his own Aryan Nations (and Church of Jesus Christ Christian) at a compound near Hayden Lake in Idaho. Butler’s departure and Swift’s later demise was not the end of Lancaster-Palmdale as a location for radical-right activities.

      Of particular interest are the Nazi Low Riders (NLR). Originally a prison gang and an offshoot of the more widely known Aryan Brotherhood, the NLR first appeared outside California penitentiaries — the California Youth Authority especially — in the early 1980s. Despite its name, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the Anti-Defamation League and other watchdog organizations describe the group as both violent and essentially white supremacist rather than anti-Semitic. Specializing in illegal drug trafficking, the NLR has been able to recruit members beyond its original cluster of young ex-inmates.

      The NLR has also proven durable. As of 2019, the group was still active. So far as our suspicions are concerned, the Low Riders have been visible both in the Palmdale-Lancaster area and San Bernardino County, where the town of Victorville is located. Several years ago, NLR members were arrested for attacking a black man in Palmdale.

      The Low Riders are hardly unique. California abounds with what the SPLC labels as hate groups. According to the SPLC’s annual report, in 2019 there were 88 such groups active in the Golden State, many of them clustered in the Los Angeles area. Not all of them, though, are sufficiently violent to carry out a nighttime lynching. Those that do would include the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division and Feurkrieg Division, some of whose members have already killed opponents.

      It may be that the two deaths by hanging mentioned at the beginning of this observation were suicides, as the police concluded originally. Or, if murder was involved and these really were lynchings, the perpetrators need not have had an affiliation with an organized group. Still, given the current heightened atmosphere in the United States, it is hard not to be suspicious.

      *[The Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right is a partner institution of Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Student Visa Debacle: All One Needs to Know About Trump’s Presidency

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      Let’s assume you had decided that American politics in the age of Donald Trump was simply too much, a risk of non-stop heartburn, high blood pressure and elevated angst. So, you checked out, perhaps burying yourself in literature or art, binging on TV or simply retreating somewhere off the grid. But November is fast approaching and, not wishing to neglect your patriotic duty to vote, it’s time to catch up now. But how?

      Just try digesting the bile fed the country and the world by Donald Trump! If only there were some way or some single issue that would make up for that time lost in your sublime isolation and could encapsulate all you needed to know about the leadership of Donald Trump without reading back issues of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist or this fair publication.

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      Lucky for you, there is. Consider the US decision on July 6 to cease student visa issuances to foreign students intending to study at any one of America’s 4,000-plus universities and colleges and hundreds of boarding and secondary schools in the event those institutions went to all-online classes as a result of the pandemic. The decision affected not only those first-time students starting their schooling in the US in the fall. It also would have impacted those already here studying, or perhaps in their respective countries or elsewhere abroad for the summer for jobs, internships, research or family and would not be able to return to complete their studies if their respective institutions moved toward all-online instruction.

      It’s All About Reelection

      The first lesson one would learn is that for Donald Trump, it’s all about his reelection in November. Obviously, schools out of session or forced to resort to online classes to minimize pandemic health risks would not be a good look for his campaign. Among so many other things, it’s imperative for him that students are back in school and parents and guardians are back on the job, creating the vital economy on which he’s staking his reelection. He has no other achievement on which he can count.

      How does he do that? That is the second lesson of this sordid affair. His administration has utterly failed to present a cogent, effective plan for combatting the virus, which would have reduced infections, hospitalizations and, most importantly, deaths, and would have allowed these institutions to reopen in the fall, as those in Europe are planning to do. In fact, he’s effectively surrendered to the virus and resorted to a trademark of his presidency: bully the target group into submission.

      For elementary, middle and high schools, that has meant threatening those that resort to online classes with loss of federal support monies. That could mean billions in lost income for public schools already facing horrendous budget cuts. For colleges and universities, it was the visa suspension or cancellation policy. That is, institutions open classrooms or lose the income from more than a million foreign students who study in the US annually. That amounts to some $41 billion in tuition, fees, boarding charges, etc. Some 425,000 jobs may also be at stake.

      Embed from Getty Images

      A third lesson in understanding the US administration is how it approaches major policy decisions affecting the nation and its people. There was no consultation, no outreach to university presidents or educational organizations, no public vetting in advance, no intergovernmental policy deliberation, not even proforma sounding of businesses to get their thoughts. Rather, Trump brandished the blunt club of student visas and held it over the heads of these institutions. It was Trump’s way, or pay.

      Moreover, little thought was given to the economic contributions of these foreign students to the economies where they live and study. Restaurants, bars, apartment complexes, car rentals and dealers, shops, barbers and hair salons, grocery stores and many other businesses had already suffered when the majority of these institutions closed in late winter and the spring to minimize the risk of COVID-19 on their campuses. Now, Trump was going to foreclose any possibility of these businesses salvaging the year. It was a thoughtless, self-centered push to bend others to his misguided, ham-fisted will.

      Put Up a Wall, Even Against Legal Visitors

      Lesson four, and not surprising, is that there was also no thought given to the intangible contributions that foreign students make to their institutions and communities in terms of exposure to different cultures, languages, ideas, values and perspectives, all of which contribute to the uniquely enriching experience of university study in the US. Inability to understand this contribution is another characteristic of the Trump presidency, its xenophobia. That was always evident from his constant drumbeat over erecting a wall along the US-Mexican border.

      There was yet a fifth lesson, this administration’s patent inability to foresee the secondary and tertiary effects of its decisions and resultingly to be caught flatfooted when they arise. In this case, the administration was clueless to the firestorm of reaction that followed the announcement of the visa policy. Institutions such as Harvard and MIT immediately mounted a legal challenge. Universities in 20 states and the District of Columbia joined together to file a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security. Petitions signed by hundreds of thousands of foreign and American students — the latter of whom vote, by the way — flooded the administration and Congress.

      Major professional associations representing university admissions and counselors also issued strong statements in opposition to the administration’s ill-considered move. Media had a field day pelting the administration with all manner of justified criticism of the policy. Even administration supporters, including Republican members of Congress, were left scratching their heads in wonder how this would make Trump look good or benefit the country.

      Of course, it didn’t. At all. The administration was forced to back down from the visa edict only days after issuing it. The decision to announce it in the first place was a blunder of colossal proportions and emblematic of a presidency and administration foundering, heedless to the needs of the nation or to the damage it does when it acts on virtually every policy issue based on distorted impulse or dyspeptic gut instinct.

      So, to our somnolent citizen seeking to exit the torpor of three and a half years of escapism, there you have it. While you blissfully slumbered, America was led by a bullying, single-mindedly reelection-obsessed, blundering, club-wielding, visionless xenophobe. Now, ponder those and the many other failings of this president and apply them to foreign policy, national security, economic policy, racial equality and justice, trade, climate policy and more, and you’ve got a pretty fair idea of the state of the country under Donald Trump. You’re all caught up!

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      COVID-19: Balancing Health Emergencies and Human Rights

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      The COVID-19 pandemic has led to governments around the world imposing state emergencies under the pretext of protecting public health. Such measures, which have included both partial and full lockdowns to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus that causes the COVID-19 disease, have had an impact on fundamental freedoms. These rights, which are highlighted under international human rights law (IHRL), include access to health care, non-discrimination, privacy, free speech, freedom of movement and peaceful assembly.

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      On April 30, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) categorically stated that under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) — the human rights treaty of the UN — governments are not allowed to deviate from their human rights obligations and commitments while combating a global pandemic. This statement was released after a majority of officials served notices to the UNHRC about the declaration of state emergencies and the restrictive measures that undermined their human rights obligations under the ICCPR. Nonetheless, all restrictive measures enforced to combat the pandemic must meet the IHRL framework and comply with the purposes and principles of the UN agency.

      Moreover, the UNHRC asserted in its statement that many other countries had imposed similar restrictive measures without formally notifying the UN body about the derogation of certain human rights. The UNHRC advised states against neglecting their obligations under international human rights law by resorting to excessive emergency actions.

      COVID-19 Pandemic and Human Rights

      There are several non-negotiable human rights principles enshrined in the IHRL framework. These include the right to life; no torture and slavery; a fair trial before a court of law; no imprisonment for breaches of contractual obligations; freedom of thought, conscience and religion; and the right to recognition as a person. Consequently, Article 4(1) of the ICCPR states:

      “In [a] time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation and the existence of which is officially proclaimed, the States Parties to the present Covenant may take measures derogating from their obligations under the present Covenant to the extent strictly required by the exigencies of the situation, provided that such measures are not inconsistent with their other obligations under international law and do not involve discrimination solely on the ground of race, colour, sex, language, religion or social origin.”

      This does not mean that other human rights obligations can be shelved during a public health emergency against the principle of legal proportionality of restrictive measures. But there is a set of laws that consist of both procedural and substantive legal requirements. States have to meet these guidelines while combating the COVID-19 disease without eschewing their human rights obligations under the IHRL framework.

      On the other hand, UN Human Rights High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet has underscored that balancing “the economic imperatives with the health and human rights imperatives during the COVID-19 pandemic is going to be one of the most delicate, daunting and defining experiences for all leaders and all governments. Their place in history will be decided by how well or how badly they perform over the coming months.”

      Pre-Derogation Measures by States

      As a general rule during health emergencies, states must announce the human rights provisions from which they have decided to relax and inform other nations through the UN secretary-general about their intentions. However, if states decide to extend the duration or geographical coverage where the derogation of rights takes place, they must issue additional notifications.

      Similarly, there is a need for immediately notifying officials in case of the termination of derogation. Pragmatically speaking, emergency measures can only restrict other human rights according to the “extent strictly required under the exigencies of the situation.” This must be as outlined in the General Comment No. 29 under Article 4 of the ICCPR.

      These steps consider the duration, location and scope of measures imposed during a state of emergency. However, countries must ensure that enforced measures are necessary, legitimate, non-discriminatory and proportionate to the emergency situation. These steps were incorporated in the Guidance on Emergency Measures and COVID-19 issued by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on April 27.

      Derogation Under Regional Human Rights Frameworks

      Guidelines for regional human rights protection (RHRP) are complementary pillars of the IHRL framework to protect and promote human rights. Similar derogation provisions are incorporated in the RHRP framework. For example, Article 15 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is based on the draft Article 4 of the UN Draft Covenant on Human Rights, which later became Article 4 of the ICCPR and Article 27 (1) of the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR).

      But the protocol of derogation cannot be used if a state is simply unable to guarantee the fulfillment of human rights under the ECHR, the ACHR and the RHRP. In other words, a country cannot hide behind the option of relaxing human rights policies under exceptional circumstances if it is unable to even uphold them during normal times. On the contrary, a state is obliged to announce the measures taken that might involve the relaxation of its requirements under the RHRP.

      Yet in March and April, several European countries notified the secretary-general of the Council of Europe about their plan to derogate from their human rights obligations as per the ECHR. Despite this, they had to resort to emergency powers within the IHRL framework while responding to a health emergency like COVID-19. In addition, emergency powers must be temporary, with a vision of restoring normalcy at the earliest.

      Second Wave?

      It is evident that there is no clarity about the number of governments complying with the requirements of the derogation protocol under the ICCPR while dealing with the pandemic. There is every chance that the novel coronavirus will soon result in a second wave and once again derail life as we know it. This would lead to repeated lockdowns, and human rights would be part of the conversation.

      It is clear that states have to be on their toes to fulfill their IHRL obligations. During this crisis, governments must avoid instances of sidestepping their human rights requirements. Such violations must be probed and the culprits brought to justice.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      The Lucrative Art of Sportswashing

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      When it was announced on July 9 that the great British road racing cyclist Chris Froome was departing Team Ineos for Israel Start-up Nation, there was some surprise amongst the racing fraternity — not about his leaving Ineos, where relations were said to be fraying, but about where he was headed. As the BBC’s Matt Warwick put it: “Froome has gone to a team who, up until … last October, were in pro cycling’s second division … Think Lionel Messi leaving Barcelona to play in the English Championship, and you’ll get the idea.”

      The man bringing Froome to Israel is 61-year-old Israeli-Canadian billionaire businessman Sylvan Adams. Adams has unabashedly appointed himself Israel’s ambassador at large, whose remit is to use his wealth and the vehicle of sport to improve the image of the country he now calls home. That sounds suspiciously like sportswashing, but Adams says that is not the case: “We’re not trying to cover up our sins and wash them away with something. Actually we’re just being ourselves and it’s not washing, it’s sport. It’s not called sportwashing, it’s called sport.”

      A New Narrative

      Adams likes to boast about bringing in celebrities like Lionel Messi for a football friendly, or Madonna when Israel hosted the Eurovision song contest. He doesn’t talk about the fees he paid to bring them in — it is all about telling positive stories, creating a new narrative. And he insists that what he is doing is not political. Adams is prepared to acknowledge that the Israelis “live in a bit of a rough neighbourhood, and we have issues with our neighbours, but that’s not the whole story.” And in his relentlessly sunny version of reality he sees but one dark cloud: “By just focusing on one aspect of life here, you are necessarily distorting the true picture and necessarily creating, and I hate to say it, fake news.”

      One of his biggest coups and one he is building on with the acquisition of Froome was to secure the first leg of the famed Giro d’Italia for Israel in 2018. Adams is himself an amateur racing fanatic: He built the Middle East’s first velodrome in Tel Aviv and named it after himself. He says that, though it took a little convincing, the Giro organizers were eventually won over and the deal was done. Again, no mention of fees. “When I brought the Giro here and we had helicopter footage from the north to the south over three beautiful days, people saw it and it looked like the Giro. Really, it was fantastic,” Adams proudly recalls.

      Embed from Getty Images

      One doubts, however, that the footage caught the concrete wall that slashes through the land and divides Palestinian families, the illegal settlements implanted in the West Bank, the olive groves uprooted and destroyed, the nearly 2 million Palestinians crammed into the 365 square kilometers of the Gaza Strip. With a mantra of good news and pleasing views, Adams hopes that what many others see as sportswashing and what he insists is just “sports” will further facilitate the process of Israel’s normalization with the Gulf states.

      He points to the presence of teams from Bahrain and the UAE in the 2018 Giro race held in Jerusalem as evidence of building friendly relations and the race itself as a “bridge of peace.” And he talks of meeting Prince Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa, son of the king of Bahrain, a fellow racing enthusiast and head of the Bahrain Cycling Team. Adams was part of the Israeli delegation that went to the Bahraini capital Manama last year to discuss financing Donald Trump’s so-called “deal of the century,” which is where he met Prince Nasser. The prince has been credibly accused of torturing protesters in 2011.

      Though the allegations against Nasser are widely known and the subject of conversation and controversy within the racing community, this news seemed either to have escaped Adams or he knew and wasn’t troubled: “I went to the palace. We had a private meeting. I told him about the velodrome and sent him an invitation.” Good news then.

      More Good News

      Continuing on the good news front, Manchester City, owned by a senior member of the Abu Dhabi ruling family, had its two-year ban from Champions League football lifted on July 13. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) overturned UEFA’s February ruling that punished the club for being in breach of Financial Fair Play regulations. Although Manchester City had “obstructed” UEFA in its investigation and shown “disregard” for the principle of cooperating with the authorities, CAS determined that as concerned the central finding — that the team’s Abu Dhabi ownership had played a shell game, disguising what was its own funding as independent sponsorship — “most of the alleged breaches were either not established or time-barred.” That does suggest rather strongly that at least some of the breaches were established and others disallowed on a technicality.

      It is widely accepted that, in building Man City into a football behemoth, club executives played fast and loose with the financial rules. Now with this decision, it is accepted that Abu Dhabi, with the payment of a €10-million fine ($11.4 million), knocked down from the €30 million UEFA had levied, can get away with it.

      For those in the business of sportswashing, that’s very good news. That and the fact that fans will look away from the unsavory, will see sport as an escape with no political intersections. As Sylvan Adams, the sportswashing denier, puts it: “I’m reaching sports fans who don’t dislike us. I’m not talking to the haters; haters gonna hate, and you know we live in a happier world. We don’t hate, we’re open, we’re free-thinking people. I’d rather live in our world. The world’s a little sunnier and nicer in our world rather than spewing hate all the time.”

      *[This article was originally published by Arab Digest.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Why Making Hagia Sophia a Mosque Again Is Good News

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      The reaction to the decision by Turkish authorities to turn Hagia Sophia from a museum back into a mosque has been illuminating. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is accused of playing religious politics. If so, he is not alone. When Pope Francis describes himself as “pained” by the news and says his thoughts are with Istanbul, as if some natural disaster had befallen the city, he too is playing religious politics.

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      The fact that this building — with one of the largest freestanding domes in the world — has stood the test of time and conflict at all is a miracle. Yet since 1934, it has stood silent, but for the passing voices and feet of tourists, as a museum.

      Given its stature as a place of spirituality, this is an astonishing fact. Imagine the Notre Dame in Paris or St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome — or indeed the myriad religious sites built upon older religious sites — spending close to a century as museums.

      Western Hypocrisy

      Despite this, the media in the West have been almost uniform in their condemnation. UNESCO, which designates the building as a World Heritage Site, has criticized the move. Western media have noted the reaction of liberals in Turkey, lamenting the undermining of the secular state.

      The condemnation is, of course, based on a key distinction between Hagia Sophia and the likes of Notre Dame and St. Peter’s Basilica. The distinction — emphasized in almost every media report — is that Hagia Sophia was built in 537 by Justinian as the seat of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the spiritual center of the Byzantine Empire. It only became a mosque in 1453 with the conquest of Constantinople by Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II.

      Notre Dame de Paris in France © beboyGiven this history of conquest, it’s a wonder that Hagia Sophia is here at all. Consider the religious sites desecrated by conquerors with new faiths, from the Temple of Solomon to the Bamiyan Buddhas. Yet Mehmed II’s first act was to hold the Islamic Friday prayers in Hagia Sophia. He may have been a Muslim, but he recognized the sheer spiritual power and majesty of this building and honored it. 

      The Ottomans removed icon frescoes and mosaics and replaced them with Arabic calligraphy, but the spiritual life of this amazing building continued under new owners. That is a testament to the building and the comparative moderation of the conquerors.

      The Mezquita of Cordoba

      The idea that Hagia Sophia is a museum, and that this is a balanced compromise between faiths, has become received wisdom. Yet the truth is that turning Hagia Sophia into a museum was hardly an act of religious tolerance. Far from it, the move was a culminating act in a decade of cultural revolution in Turkey, in which the regime of republican leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk pulled up the Ottoman inheritance by its roots.

      It was not a generous gesture to the Greek Orthodox Church, but a symbolic attack on the power of Islam in Turkey. It remains that to this day. Unspoken in today’s debate is the fact that Hagia Sophia became a museum in an era when the Sufi brotherhoods of Turkey were outlawed, the adhan (call to prayer) could no longer be called in Arabic and religious dress was prohibited. Into recent times, Sufism has remained persecuted and the whirling dervishes perform for tourists — rites that the secular establishment had largely destroyed in any real sense. 

      Given this backdrop, the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a museum takes on a different complexion, as if spirituality itself were a museum, which is after all what Ataturk intended by such a move. Turning the building back into a place of worship can then be seen as one more step in the reemergence of an older Turkish cultural inheritance. 

      Inside the Mezquita of Cordoba in Spain © Matej KastelicThe fact that Hagia Sophia was once a cathedral is no barrier to it now being a mosque. Consider the Mezquita in Cordoba, one of the finest architectural monuments in the Iberian Peninsula (and itself built on the site of an earlier Visigoth church). It was perhaps the greatest mosque in Muslim Spain, before being converted into a cathedral in 1236 by King Ferdinand of Castile.

      Today, a cathedral stands in its center and it remains illegal for a Muslim to kneel there in prayer. Yet few Spaniards would countenance it being converted into a museum as an act of magnanimity toward Islam, nor are there calls from global institutions for Spain to do so. Requests by the Islamic Council of Spain to allow Muslim prayer have been opposed by the Vatican and Spanish ecclesiastical authorities.

      The Loss of Greek Anatolia

      Converting Hagia Sophia back into a mosque reflects the present reality of modern-day Turkey, which is that of a Muslim-majority population. Just as you expect Westminster Abbey in London to be a Christian place of worship, it’s natural that Hagia Sophia should be a Muslim place of worship, with due interfaith dialogue and public access.

      This contemporary reality doesn’t negate the very real tragedy of the loss of Greek Anatolia. That loss is far more recent than 1453. The same regime that turned Hagia Sophia into a museum was also responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Anatolia of Greek Orthodox communities. Over 1 million Greeks were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands and sent as refugees to modern-day Athens and Thessaloniki.

      Today, you can wander through their empty churches in Cappadocia, in central Anatolia, or at sites like Karmylassos (Karakoy) in southwest Turkey, where an entire ghost town is left sprawled on the hillside as a brutal reminder of the wholesale removal of a people and culture. 

      What was done in the name of creating an ethnically Turkish republican state was barbaric, just as what was done to create an ethnically Greek republican state. Ethnic nationalism accepts no gray areas, and ordinary people are its victims, on both sides of the dividing line.

      In Support of Islam

      Yet the violent forces that produced that ethnic cleansing also produced the zealous ideology of Westernization that uprooted the Ottoman legacy in the land of modern Turkey. It means a seam of bitterness and division runs through the very heart of the modern state. 

      Inside Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey © Artur Bogacki / ShutterstockIt is disingenuous of Western observers to say that Hagia Sophia should remain a museum for the sake of religious tolerance. If tolerance and moderation are our goals, then we should welcome the return of the call to prayer to Hagia Sophia, just as we would welcome the return of church bells at Notre Dame, had it been turned into a museum by secular revolutionaries.

      To welcome it is to support moderate Islam. To not do so is to leave moderate Muslims in a curious bind, not wishing to create conflict, yet expected to disapprove of seeing the spiritual centerpiece of Turkey’s largest city being devoted once more to worship. It also turns the building into a focal point for the more extremist.

      The remarks of Pope Francis are astonishing for a religious leader. That he is “pained” by the idea of such a site of spirituality being turned from a museum back into a place of worship smacks of the worst kind of bigotry. Must it only be “my god” who is worshipped, both here and in former mosques elsewhere?

      Equally, secular outrage is disingenuous. This is a religious building. The secularists are right to resist attempts to constrain their lifestyle, such as the prohibition of alcohol or sexual freedoms, just as Muslims in Turkey have chafed at secular restrictions on their own lifestyles. But Hagia Sophia is a religious space, first and foremost.

      The historic mistake was turning Hagia Sophia into a museum in 1934, in a cultural revolution that has impoverished Turkish society ever since. Whether the pious nationalists of the ruling party will usher in a moderate or yet more divisive era for this unique building, only time will reveal.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      The One-State Reality to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

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      The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been raging for over seven decades, and the prospects for peace have never seemed more distant than today. The two-state solution, which was once the most widely-accepted remedy for the impasse, has lost traction, and efforts by the United Nations and other intermediaries to resolve the dispute have got nowhere.

      In 2018, a survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University found that only 43% of Palestinians and Israeli Jews support the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. This was down from 52% of Palestinians and 47% of Israeli Jews who favored a two-state concept just a year prior.

      In October 2019, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Nickolay Mladenov, described the situation in the occupied Palestinian Territories as “a multi-generational tragedy.” He said to the Security Council that Israeli settlements — which are illegal under international law — on Palestinian land represent a substantial obstacle to the peace process.

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      US President Donald Trump, who is seen by some observers as the most pro-Israel president since Harry Truman, has billed himself as Israel’s best friend in the White House. Trump has overturned the US position on many aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the dismay of the Palestinian people and leadership. His administration has recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and no longer considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be inconsistent with international law.

      In January, the Trump administration unveiled its long-awaited peace plan. Dubbed the “deal of the century,” the 181-page document was promoted by Washington as the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Palestinian factions have rejected the proposal as overly biased and one-sided in favor of Israel.

      Ian Lustick is an American political scientist holding the Bess W. Heyman Chair in the Political Science Department of the University of Pennsylvania. He is an advocate of what he calls a “one-state reality” to solve the conflict. His latest book, published in October 2019, is called “Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality.”

      In this edition of The Interview, Fair Observer talks to Lustick about the ongoing skirmishes between the Israelis and Palestinians, the declining traction of the two-state solution, the BDS movement and the US support for Israel.

      The transcript has been edited for clarity.

      Kourosh Ziabari: In your 2013 article in The New York Times titled “Two-State Illusion,” you note that Israelis and Palestinians have their own reasons to cling to the two-state ideal. For the Palestinians, you write that it’s a matter of ensuring that diplomatic and financial aid they receive keeps coming, and for the Israelis, this notion is a reflection of the views of the Jewish Israeli majority that also shields Israel from international criticism. Are you saying that these reasons are morally unjustified? Why do you call the two-state solution an illusion?

      Ian Lustick: I do not argue they are morally unjustified. I am seeking to explain why they persist in the face of the implausibility if not the impossibility of attaining a negotiated two-state solution. I am trying to solve the puzzle of why public agitation for it continues by these groups, one that wants a real two-state solution and one that does not, even though the leaders of each group know that the two-state solution cannot be achieved. The key to the answer is a “Nash Equilibrium” in which both sides, and other actors as well — the US government and the peace process industry — can get what they minimally need by effectively giving up on what they really want.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The mistaken idea that Israelis and Palestinians can actually reach an agreement of a two-state solution through negotiations is an illusion because so many people still actually believe it is attainable when it is not.

      Ziabari: As you’ve explained in your writings, the favorable two-state situation envisioned by Israel is one that ignores Palestinian refugees’ “right of return,” guarantees that Jerusalem will be the capital of Israel and controlled by Israel, and fortifies the position of Jewish settlements. On the other side, the Palestinian version of the two-state solution imagines the return of refugees, demands the evacuation of Israeli settlements and claims East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state. Do you think the two sides will ever succeed in narrowing these stark differences?

      Lustick: No. The elements of the two-state solution that would make it acceptable to Palestinians are those that make it unacceptable to the majority of Israeli Jews who now have firm control of the Israeli government and of the Israeli political arena. But once a one-state reality is acknowledged, then both sides can agree that Jerusalem should be united and accessible to all who live within the state, that refugees within the borders of the state, at least, should have a right to move to and live in any part of the state, and that owners of land and property seized illegally or unjustly anywhere in the state can seek redress, or that discrimination in the right to own and inhabit homes anywhere in the state must be brought to an end.

      Ziabari: You are an advocate of a one-state solution to the decades-old Israeli–Palestinian conflict. What are the characteristics of such a country? Do you think Israelis and Palestinians will really agree to live alongside each other under a unified leadership, share resources, abandon their mutual grievances and refuse to engage in religious and political provocation against the other side while there are no geographical borders separating them?

      Lustick: I do not advocate a “one-state solution” in the sense that I do not see a clear path from where we are now to that “pretty picture” of the future. I instead seek to analyze a reality — a one-state reality — that is far from pretty, and thereby not a solution. But that reality has dynamics which are not under the control of any one group, and those dynamics can lead to processes of democratization within the one-state reality that could produce a set of problems in the future better than the problems that Jews and Arabs have today between the river and the sea.

      The substantive difference I have with advocates of the “one-state solution” is that they imagine Jews and Arabs “negotiating,” as two sides, to agree on a new “one-state” arrangement. I do not share that view as even a possibility. But within the one-state reality, different groups of Jews and Arabs can find different reasons to cooperate or oppose one another, leading to new and productive political processes and trends of democratization. That is how, for example, the United States was transformed from a white-ruled country with masses of freed slaves who exercised no political rights whatsoever into a multiracial democracy. Abraham Lincoln never imagined this as a “one-state solution” — it was the unintended consequence of the union’s annexation of the South, with its masses of black, non-citizen inhabitants, after the Civil War.

      Ziabari: Several UN Security Council resolutions have been issued that call upon Israel to refrain from resorting to violence against Palestinian citizens, safeguard the welfare and security of people living under occupation, halt its settlement constructions and withdraw from the lands it occupied during the 1967 war. Some of the most important ones are Resolution 237, Resolution 242 and Resolution 446. There are also resolutions deploring Israel’s efforts to alter the status of Jerusalem. However, Israel has ignored these formal expressions of the UN and seems to face no consequences. How has Israel been able to disregard these resolutions without paying a price?

      Embed from Getty Images

      Lustick: The short answer to this is that the Israel lobby has enforced extreme positions on US administrations so that the United States has provided the economic, military, political and diplomatic support necessary for Israel to withstand such international pressures. The reasons for the Israel lobby’s success are detailed in my book and can be traced, ultimately, to the hard work and dedication of lobby activists, the misconceived passion of American Jews and evangelicals to “protect” Israel, and the fundamental character of American politics which gives a single-issue movement in foreign policy enormous leverage over presidents and over members of Congress.

      Ziabari: You’ve worked with the State Department. How prudent and constructive is the current US administration’s policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? What are the implications of decisions such as recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, cutting off funding to UNRWA and closing down the PLO office in Washington, DC? Will the “deal of the century” resolve the Middle East deadlock?

      Lustick: US policy has, for decades, been unable to realize its foreign policy interests in this domain for reasons I explained earlier. Now that the opportunity to do so via a two-state solution has been lost, the policies of the Trump administration hardly matter, except that by not emphasizing America’s emphasis on democracy and equality, it postpones the time when Israelis and Palestinians will begin the kinds of internal struggles over democracy and equal rights that hold promise of improving the one-state reality.

      Ziabari: Is the Trump administration working to silence criticism of Israel by painting narratives that are unequivocal in censuring Israel’s policies as anti-Semitic? Do you see any difference between Trump’s efforts in protecting Israel against international criticism with those of his predecessors?

      Lustick: Yes. The Trump administration has sided in an unprecedentedly explicit way with the extreme wing of the Israel lobby and with extreme and intolerant right-wing forces in Israel. 

      Ziabari: The proponents of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, who believe that denying Israel economic opportunities and investment will serve to change its policies regarding the Palestinian people, are widely smeared as anti-Semites. Is the BDS movement anti-Semitic?

      Lustick: There may be some anti-Semites among BDS supporters, but the movement itself is no more anti-Semitic than the Jewish campaign to boycott France during the Dreyfus trial was “anti-French people.” In fact, as it becomes clearer to everyone that successful negotiations toward a two-state solution will not occur, the significance of the BDS movement will grow rapidly. 

      It is an effective way to express, non-violently, an approach to the conflict that emphasizes increasing justice and quality of life for all those living between the river and the sea. Its focus is not on the particular institutional architecture of an outcome, but on the extent to which values of equality, democracy and non-exclusivist rights to self-determination for Jews and Arabs can be realized. Nor do BDS supporters need to agree on which forms of discrimination, at which level, they focus on. Some may target sanctions against every Israeli institution, but many will target the most blatant forms of discrimination, such as radically different rights and protections accorded to Arabs vs. Jews in the West Bank, in the Jerusalem municipality or in southwest Israel, including the Gaza Strip.

      Ziabari: The settlement of disputes between Palestinians and Israelis requires a reliable and effective mediator, one in which both parties have trust. Which government or international organization is most qualified to fulfill this role?

      Lustick: The time for mediation or negotiation between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, as two groups, has effectively passed. That is no longer what is crucial. What is crucial are political processes within each group and across them. African Americans became empowered over generations, not because an outside mediator helped arrange an agreement between whites and blacks, but because gradually self-interested whites saw opportunities in the emancipation of and alliances with blacks. 

      This approach does imagine a long-time frame, but when states with democratic elements are confronted with masses of formerly excluded and despised populations, that is the kind of time it takes to achieve integration and democratization. In addition to the American case vis-à-vis blacks, consider how long it took to integrate Irish Catholics into British politics after Ireland was annexed in 1801, or how long it took South Africa to integrate and democratize its long excluded and oppressed black majority.

      Ziabari: And a final question: Will the unveiling of President Trump’s “deal of the century” change anything for the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Some Middle East observers say it is just a green light for Israel to go ahead with annexing more Palestinian territory. Others believe Israel doesn’t need such an endorsement and has been annexing Palestinian lands anyway. What do you think about the deal and how it will transform the demographics and political calculus of the region?

      Lustick: The Trump plan is a hoax. In the pages it devotes to its own justification appear all the Israeli government’s favorite propaganda lines. The “negotiations” that produced it were between the most ultranationalist and fundamentalist government in Israel’s history and a group of “Israel firsters” in the White House who are just as extreme, though substantially more ignorant. Advanced originally as a plan to give Palestinians a higher standard of living instead of a real state, it actually proposes no money for Palestinians until they become Finland. Only after that will Israel be empowered, if it wishes, to grant them not a state, but something Israel is willing for Palestinians to call a state but existing within the state of Israel.

      If realized as written, the plan would be an archipelago of sealed Palestinian ghettos. By awarding Israel prerogatives to patrol, supervise, intervene and regulate all movement to and from those ghettos, the plan affirms the one-state reality while offering Israel at least temporary protection against having to admit and defend apartheid by describing itself as a two-state solution. This is Palestine as Transkei or Bophuthatswana. As a plan, it has no chance of being implemented. Its real function is to give temporary cover to the deepening of silent apartheid.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More