Archivo de la etiqueta: Israel

Israel stirs the pot in Syria

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Israel stirs the pot in Syria

by , Mondoweiss, June 17, 2013

For much of the past two years Israel stood sphinx-like on the sidelines of Syria’s civil war. Did it want Bashar al-Assad’s regime toppled? Did it favour military intervention to help opposition forces? And what did it think of the increasing visibility of Islamist groups in Syria? It was difficult to guess.

In recent weeks, however, Israel has moved from relative inaction to a deepening involvement in Syrian affairs. It launched two air strikes on Syrian positions last month, and at the same time fomented claims that Damascus had used chemical weapons, in what looked suspiciously like an attempt to corner Washington into direct intervention.

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Iran’s presidential election

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Iran_Presidenciales

Iran’s presidential election: Don´t Ignore It

Good riddance to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The election might just bring something better

IN THIS election, more than 700 aspiring candidates have been barred from competing by a council of crusty clerics and lawyers. They are said to have failed to live up to the required standard of revolutionary and religious zeal, leaving just eight runners deemed worthy of the mantle being relinquished by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. That may not seem like much of a choice to citizens of normal democracies. But in Iran it is the best on offer.

The first round of the presidential election takes place on June 14th, with a run-off a week later if no one gets a majority. The candidates, pictured before a television debate, are a glum bunch, with Saeed Jalili the apparent favourite of the hardliners and the most moderate being another former nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rohani. There is the added twist that the final say in the gravest matters of state, including the nuclear programme, is the preserve of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has fallen out badly with Mr Ahmadinejad in the past few years. All the same, the election is a meaningful, even menacing, event—and one whose outcome, on past experience, cannot be predicted (see article).

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Syria Is Now Saudi Arabia’s Problem

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Salim_Idris Brigadier General Salim Idriss

Syria Is Now Saudi Arabia’s Problem

The battle for a town on the Lebanese border marks the kingdom’s first attempt to lead Syria’s fractured opposition.

By Hassan Hassan | June 6, 2013

Hezbollah can finally claim a victory in Syria. The town of Qusayr, adjacent to the Lebanese border, has fallen to the Lebanese militia after nearly a month of fierce battles with Syrian rebels. Dozens of Hezbollah’s fighters have been killed, despite air cover and ground support from Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

The Qusayr battle has been constantly, and wrongly, described as a turning point in the Syrian war. Why has this small town of some 30,000 residents become “strategic,” as it is constantly described in the press, all of a sudden? The town had previously been run by its Sunni residents for more than a year, with little mention of its strategic benefits.

Hezbollah’s open military intervention in Syria partly explains the publicity the Qusayr battle has received. As a result, the “Party of God” has lost much of its political and ideological capital in the region — a capital the militia had painstakingly acquired from its three-decade career of “resisting” Israel.

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What Mideast Crisis? Israelis Have Moved On

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wedding-photographer-israel-jerusalem-013 A wedding in Israel – ChristophePhoto – Wedding Photographer, Jerusalem

What Mideast Crisis? Israelis Have Moved On

By Ethan Bronner, The New York Times, May 25, 2013

FOR years, conventional wisdom has held that as long as Israel faces the external challenge of Arab — especially Palestinian — hostility it will never come to terms with its internal divisions. The left has sometimes used it as an argument: we must make peace with the Palestinians so that we can set our house in order — write a constitution, figure out the public role of religion. Others have viewed the threat as almost a silver lining keeping the place together: differences among Israeli Jews (religious or secular, Ashkenazic or Sephardic) are so profound, the argument goes, that if the society ever manages to turn its attention inward, it might tear itself apart.

Back in Tel Aviv for a recent visit a year after ending my tour as Jerusalem bureau chief, I was struck by how antiquated that wisdom felt. At a fascinating and raucous wedding I attended and from numerous conversations with a range of Israelis, I came away with a very different impression. Few even talk about the Palestinians or the Arab world on their borders, despite the tumult and the renewed peace efforts by Secretary of State John Kerry, who has been visiting the region in recent days. Instead of focusing on what has long been seen as their central challenge — how to share this land with another nation — Israelis are largely ignoring it, insisting that the problem is both insoluble for now and less significant than the world thinks. We cannot fix it, many say, but we can manage it.

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La desecación del Tigris y el Eúfrates

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TIGRI Cuenca del Tigris y el Eúfrates. Fuente: FAO

Ojo con este notición que ha pasado desapercibido

S. McCoy, Valor Añadido/Cotizalia, 13 de marzo, 2013

Saben ustedes que uno de los mayores focos de conflicto a nivel internacional es lo que se ha dado a conocer como Oriente Medio, que no sólo engloba a Israel, Siria, Jordania o Egipto, sino que se extiende hacia el este hasta alcanzar Iraq e Irán. Al conflicto secular árabe-israelí, se unen las sucesivas disputas en la región con el petróleo como razón de fondo y, más recientemente, las revueltas del norte de África. Zona estratégica esta para el comercio mundial y para el aprovisionamiento internacional de material primas -gracias al Canal de Suez y al estrecho de Ormuz-; cualquier novedad, por mínima que sea, que afecte a su disputado territorio puede tener enormes implicaciones, políticas, económicas y sociales, a nivel global.

De ahí que resulte especialmente relevante, a juicio de quien esto les escribe, un artículo publicado por el semanario económico The Economist en su edición de esta misma semana. Pieza sin apenas relevancia aparente que ha encontrado nulo eco editorial y bajo predicamento en sus páginas. Y que, sin embargo, puede ser el copo de nieve que desencadene una nueva avalancha en la zona, la enésima, de inciertas consecuencias para el conjunto de los países afectados y el resto del planeta.

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