Populist Wave Reaches Czech Rep.

By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, NB] Telegraph-Journal

The populist wave engulfing eastern Europe has reached the Czech Republic.

Andrej Babis, a billionaire who rode a wave of anger toward the corruption and complacency of conventional politics, won a resounding legislative victory in October.

His anti-establishment party, ARNO – a Czech acronym for Action of Dissatisfied Citizens --overpowered the Czech Republic’s mainstream parties in legislative elections.

Founded in 2012, it gained nearly 30 per cent of the vote, for 78 of the 200 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. The right-of-centre Civic Democratic Party (ODS) came second with 11.3 per cent, good for 25 seats.

The Social Democrats, who had finished first in the previous election, came in a distant sixth with just over seven per cent and 15 seats. 

The Christian Democrats, another party that traces its roots to the country’s founding, got less than six per cent and just 10 seats.

Another surprise was the strong showing of Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD), the extreme right-wing party of entrepreneur Tomio Okamura. Its leader, of mixed Czech and Japanese-Korean descent, has lived in the Czech Republic since he was a child. 

His party won 10.6 per cent of the ballots cast and elected 22 deputies.

“The elections have confirmed the downfall of traditional parties,” contended Milos Gregor, an analyst at the International Institute for Political Science at Masaryk University in Brno. 

Babis ran on nationalist themes such as opposition to immigration, along with a promise to use his business skills to streamline government, reduce red tape and fight corruption.

Okamura said he opposed the country’s mainstream parties and political establishment because its message is “pro-Brussels, pro-multiculturalism and pro-Islam.”

He has called for a referendum on continued membership in the European Union. “We are living under a total EU dictatorship,” he declared. “Not even the Soviet Union dared to dictate to us who should live here and who shouldn’t.” 

The SPD hosted a conference of European far-right leaders in Prague on Dec. 16.

In the Czech Republic, which accepted only 12 out of the 1,600 refugees it was required to take in under the EU migrant redistribution system, Babis has shown a willingness to work with Okamura and his SPD.

Anxieties about national identity are particularly strong in the former Communist countries like the Czech Republic, which emerged after the “velvet divorce,” when Czechoslovakia split into two nations in 1993.

Slovaks, who long felt neglected in the old bi-national state, proved themselves to the world as a new nation, “while the Czechs were left with nostalgia and regret,” explained Jiri Pehe, the director of New York University’s academic centre in Prague.

That lack of clear identity, he remarked, has led Czechs to become anxious about globalization and migration, and so they are “looking for some protection.”

Babis controls a conglomerate with interests in agribusiness, forestry, food processing and chemicals that stretches across several European countries, with an estimated worth of more than $4 billion.

As the new prime minister, though one running a minority government, he has promised to protect Czechs from overreach by Brussels, though he also wants to remain in the EU.

But he also stressed that Prague needs to develop closer ties with all potential trading partners, including Russia. Some of his allies are supporters of Vladimir Putin and might try to convince him to tilt toward Moscow.

The days of idealistic leaders like the writer Vaclav Havel, the first president of the country, who died in 2011, are long gone.

The Shadowy Existence of Transnistria

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

 

Wedged between Moldova and Ukraine, it is home to more than 555,000 people and has a parliamentary government, a standing army, and its own currency. 

It controls a narrow strip of territory to the east of the Dniester River, and also the city of Bender and its surrounding localities on the west bank.

The largest ethnic groups are Romanian-speaking Moldovans, at 33 per cent, Russians at 34 per cent, and Ukrainians at 27 per cent. So Slavs outnumber ethnic Romanians by two to one.

The de facto state of Transnistria, as it calls itself, has all the trappings of an independent nation, but isn’t recognized as such by most of the world.

As the Soviet Union started to implode in 1990, its constituent union republics sought independence within their Soviet borders. But this would leave many minorities in those republics at the mercy of the majorities in the newly-formed independent states.

Hence, separatist movements sprang up among minorities trying to themselves secede from the seceding states.

One such case, in the southwestern corner of the old USSR, involved Moldova. In this case, Russian and Ukrainian minorities in the new state feared that the majority Romanians in Moldova might decide to join neighbouring Romania.

Hence the formation of Transnistria, a reaction to the lack of self-determination guarantees in case Chisinau decided on this move. Before 1940, in fact, the Romanian-majority part of Moldova had itself been part of Romania.

Reacting to Moldova’s declaration of independence, the Transnistrian Supreme Soviet voted to establish its own state. Naturally, Moldova resisted this. 

The subsequent military conflict of 1990-1992 resulted from Moldova’s attempt to achieve territorial control over the breakaway region, and this in turn provoked the Russian 14^th Army to intervene “for the sake of Russophones rights in self-determination.”

The 1992 ceasefire agreement included the establishment of a Joint Control Commission to supervise security arrangements in a demilitarized zone consisting of 20 towns on both sides of the Dnieper River. 

Transnistria bases its existence as a nation on its separate history and distinctiveness from Moldova. 

Its leaders point to the fact that the old Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR) had consisted of two parts -- the one, known as Bessarabia, that was part of Romania in  the1919-1940 interwar period, and the other, the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldova, that was created in 1924 within Ukraine.

According to the Transnistrian view, the MSSR was dissolved by both of its two parts, Moldova and Transnistria. This was not an act of secession. 

Transnistrian independence was declared through referenda in 1990-91, the adoption of its constitution in a referendum in 1995, and at a second referendum re-affirming self-determination and free association with Russia in 2006. 

Tiraspol, the capital of Transnistria, features monuments to Vladimir Lenin. Russian flags flying above Transnistrian government buildings.

The Transnistrian ruble bears the images of Russian figures like General Alexander Suvorov and Catherine the Great. 

Everything from Russian food to medicine and fuel reaches Transnistria through Ukraine. But Kyiv on May 20 imposed a temporary blockade on Transnistria.

But Moldova itself is to some extent at the mercy of Moscow. For example, its electricity is produced at a plant in Transnistria. However, Transnistria does not pay for the gas it receives from Russia’s state-owned Gazprom to fuel the power plant; rather, Gazprom charges Moldova for those gas deliveries. 

So, though Moldova’s independence was at first considered a step towards the reunification with Romania by the Bucharest government, this hasn’t happened.

Moldovan politicians are themselves divided between those who look to the West and those oriented toward Moscow. In November 2016, Moldova elected a pro-Moscow candidate, Igor Dodon, to the country’s presidency. 

Meanwhile, efforts on ending the Moldovan-Transnistrian impasse have made little headway, though talks in Vienna in late November, which included the participation of Russia, Ukraine, the United States, the European Union, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, made some progress.

“Despite Transnistria declaring its own independence, it will not achieve it, unless Moldova decides to recognize it,” according to Thomas de Waal, a British expert on Eastern Europe. “The most likely future is either more of the same --an unrecognized status and shadowy semi-statehood, or a confederation agreement with Moldova.”

Putin Will Remain “Tsar” of Russia in 2018

By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

This March 18, Vladimir Putin will again be crowned “tsar” of Russia at its next presidential election.

Others who have announced their candidacies include the far-right politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Yabloko party leader Grigory Yavlinsky, Gennady Zyuganov of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and television host Ksenia Sobchak. 

With Putin’s approval rating topping 80 per cent, none have a chance.

Domestically, despite western sanctions and the dip in the world price of oil, Putin has kept his country economically stable. 

In relations with former Soviet states in the “near abroad,” he has annexed the Crimea, with its ethnic Russian majority, and has provided aid to pro-Moscow rebels in eastern Ukraine. 

In foreign policy, he can point to Moscow’s successful intervention in the Syrian civil war as evidence that Russia is once again a major player internationally.

Russia has conducted joint military exercises with Egypt and signed a preliminary agreement for its air force to use Egyptian bases.

In December, Putin visited the Middle East and met with presidents Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Egypt to discuss the future of the region.

All this has endeared Putin to most Russians, who believe in the importance of maintaining a strong state domestically and the need to project the status of a great power internationally.

There is probably no outright ballot-stuffing in Russian elections, but they’re not exactly free and fair.

The regime controls the largest television stations, which remain the main source of information for the majority of the population. And, given the close connection between business and the state, Putin has the ability to dissuade businesses from funding opponents of the regime.

Not everyone is allowed to participate in the elections; the Justice Ministry decides.

One of Putin’s main critics, the liberal Boris Nemtsov, was murdered in Moscow in 2015; many suspect the Kremlin of being behind the assassination. 

The dissident Alexey Navalny wants run, but officials say he will be barred from running for public office due to a conviction for embezzlement earlier this year, which he claimed was politically motivated.

Though far weaker than it was earlier in Putin’s presidency, the economy is predicted to grow by 1.7 per cent in 2017 after contracting by 3.1 per cent in 2015-2016.

But the decision to improve Russia’s armed forces, the result of the 2008 war with Georgia and the more recent interventions in Ukraine and Syria, has led to increased military spending.

Under Putin the country began to push back against Western hegemony. Some of this is due to American failure to treat Russia as an equal during the turbulent Boris Yeltsin years in the 1990s.

For Russians, this was a time of crony capitalism, political embarrassment, and international humiliation, and it enabled NATO to expand eastwards to the very borders of Russia.

The 2014 Ukrainian uprising that removed a pro-Moscow president and led to Russia’s incursion was the fault of the West, according to Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian Studies at both Princeton and New York Universities.

“If you’re sitting in the Kremlin, and you see this as surreptitious NATO expansion,” right in neighbouring Ukraine, “do you do nothing?”

Putin thinks that the pro-democracy protests in Moscow in 2012 and in 2017 were propelled by Western efforts to undermine the regime and ultimately bring about regime change. 

Moscow also considers the recent Western attacks on Russia for allegedly meddling in elections in the United States and Europe as politically motivated.

Putin has turned a resurgent Russia into a personalistic dictatorship and the election will be little more than a referendum on his popularity.

Australia’s Cautionary Tale on China

By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, NB] Telegraph-Journal

Though both countries started off as British Empire settler states, Canada and Australia have followed different political trajectories over the decades.

Australia, in general, tends to have a more volatile political system, and one further to the right of ours.

Australians also live in a different geographical neighbourhood, and this has led to an increased emphasis on military defence.

While it does rely on American support through the 1951 collective security agreement known as the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty (ANZUS), Canberra knows that America is far away.

In the Second World War, Japan bombed the northern Australian city of Darwin, and also occupied much of the nearby island of New Guinea, the eastern half of which was governed from Canberra. 

Approximately 216,000 Japanese, Australian and U.S. troops died during the New Guinea campaign. Unlike Canada, Australia had faced a potential invasion by an Axis power.

Today, it is wary of another major state, China, whose own geopolitical aims keep growing. 

Last year, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who heads the governing Liberal-National Coalition of centre-right parties, in a Defence White Paper announced a robust increase in military spending, including the biggest expansion to its navy since 1945.

Military spending would be increased to two per cent of the country’s gross domestic product by 2021.

The government was “particularly concerned” about the “unprecedented pace and scale” of land reclamation by the Chinese in the South China Sea, the document said.

China has added nearly 3,000 acres of land to atolls to make them capable of accommodating military aircraft and equipment. 

In December of 2017, a follow-up paper backed the idea of joining India, Japan and the U.S. to promote a free and democratic Indo-Pacific region that could offset China.

Exports to China, particularly in mining, have grown fivefold in the past decade. China bought $70 billion worth of Australian goods and services last year.  

But controversy over Chinese influence within the country’s domestic economy and politics has been intensifying.

Foreign ownership of agricultural land, in particular, is a touchy subject. In April 2016, the Australian government blocked a bid that would have seen a chunk of land the size of Ireland sold to a private Chinese company, Shanghai-based Dakang.

The government also stopped a Chinese bid for a major electricity grid, Ausgrid, on national-security grounds.

As well, money has been flowing to Australian political parties from companies and individuals with ties to the Chinese government. Turnbull has now unveiled a series of proposed laws to curb foreign influence in Australian politics.

This followed accusations that Senator Sam Dastyari of the opposition Labour Party became an advocate of Chinese policy after accepting money from Chinese billionaire Huang Xiangmo. 

In 2015 he attempted to persuade Labour’s foreign affairs spokesperson, Tanya Plibersek, to cancel a meeting with a member of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. Dastyari has now resigned from parliament.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann also received a $20,000 donation from Huang last year.

Has some of this spilled over into overt anti-Chinese attitudes? Beijing thinks so. After all, the country’s “white Australia” immigration policies were a feature of its politics for many decades.

The prime minister denies this, declaring that Australia was entitled to stand up for its sovereign interests.

Nevertheless, Australia’s relations with China are cooling. And for a country that is seeking closer ties with the rising power, Canada might do well to see Australia’s case as cautionary.

Ukraine: It Isn’t What You Think

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

Thanks in part to people like our foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, we have a picture of Ukraine as a plucky democracy, fending off the Russian bear.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman visited Canada in late October, met with Justin Trudeau, and was feted with a Ukrainian Day on Parliament Hill, at s reception organized by the Canada-Ukraine Parliamentary Program.

He was here primarily to promote his country as a great Canadian opportunity for trade and investment.

Pointing to the “deep friendship between Canada and Ukraine,” Trudeau expressed his government’s intention to “build on the growing economic ties between our countries.” 

The coming into force of the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement in August, he said, is “an opportunity to create even greater opportunities for our citizens to grow the economies and to deepen the friendship we have with Ukraine.”

Canada will always stand with Ukraine, Trudeau added, “whether it’s against illegitimate, illegal Russian actions or in other world spheres.”

Groysman also visited Toronto, where he addressed the Ukrainian-Canadian Business Forum on October 30, and traveled to Montreal, to seek investment from Canadian aerospace companies in Ukraine’s airplane industry.

The love-in during the Ottawa visit was only marred when one MP asked Groysman about Ukraine’s anti-corruption initiatives in light of recent protests in Kyiv by thousands of people calling for the resignation of his government for failing to tackle the country’s culture of corruption.

In fact the reality in today’s Ukraine is just that. Its president, Petro Poroshenko, has been accused of delaying efforts to set up a specialised anti-corruption court, while undermining the independence of the agency tasked with investigating corrupt officials. 

Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), on Dec. 6 stated that the IMF is “deeply concerned by recent events in Ukraine that could roll back progress that has been made in setting up independent institutions to tackle high-level corruption, including the National Anticorruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Special Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO). 

She was referring to a bill under parliamentary consideration that would undermine the country’s only independent investigative body by dismissing its chief.

The European Union and United States, too, warned Ukraine against moves that would hinder its fight against entrenched corruption.

Anti-Poroshenko protesters have now set up a camp outside Ukraine’s parliament. Of late, this has even involved, of all things, a former president of Georgia.

Mikheil Saakashvili rose to power in Georgia in 2003 with a crusade against corruption. But after he launched a war with Russia in 2008, his country suffered a catastrophic defeat. He lost power in 2013 and arrived in Ukraine in 2015.

Given Saakashvili’s anti-Russian credentials, at first he and Poroshenko were friends. Saakashvili was given Ukrainian citizenship and made governor of Odessa. But 18 months later Saakashvili resigned, accusing the president of failing to support him in the fight against endemic corruption and graft. 

The two are now enemies. Poroshenko stripped Saakashvili of Ukrainian citizenship while he was out of the country in July, but he came back in September, helped by supporters who broke through a police line at the Polish border. 

On Dec. 8 Saakashvili was arrested in Kyiv. Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuri Lutsenko claimed that Saakashvili had received $500,000 from an ally of Ukraine’s former President Viktor Yanukovych to finance his protests.

 “We will go to parliament and call for the impeachment of Poroshenko, who is a thief, who is mega-corrupt and is plundering the whole of Ukraine,” he had told a BBC reporter prior to his detention.

A few days later, several thousand protesters shouted ‘Shame’ and ‘Impeachment’ as they marched to Maidan Square in his support and in opposition to the president.

Saakashvili won support from other Ukrainian opposition leaders, including former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. She criticized the arrest as “political terror.”

Ukraine remains a relatively poor country, with a per capita GDP of $2,800. Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index places it very low, at 131 out of 176 countries.

The main causes of corruption in Ukraine are a weak justice system, an over-controlling non-transparent government, combined with overly-close business ties to government, and a weak civil society. 

Some go so far as to describe it as a kleptocracy in which oligarchs enrich themselves with public money. You may not hear about these things from our foreign minister.

Jerusalem’s YMCA is a Serene Oasis

By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Jerusalem is, as always, much in the news these days, contested between Jews, Muslims and Christians, and fought over by Israelis and Palestinians.

This has especially been the case in recent days, following U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement that Washington will recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move its Tel Aviv embassy there.

There are, though, some oases of peace in the Holy City. One of these, situated on Rehov HaMelech David in West Jerusalem, across from the famous King David Hotel, is the Jerusalem International YMCA, one of the landmarks outside the Old City’s walls. 

I would sometimes have a coffee and read the newspapers in the Y when I was a student in the city in 1972. I revisited the building – which was modernized and expanded a decade ago – on my recent trip to Israel.

In 1924, Archibald Clinton Harte, General Secretary of the International YMCA, raised the sum of one million dollars towards the construction of the building. His vision was that it would serve as a bridge between faiths and cultures.

It opened in 1933, when Palestine was governed as a League of Nations Mandate by Great Britain. General Edmund Allenby, who had conquered Jerusalem from the Ottoman Turks in 1917, spoke at the inaugural ceremony, and his words, in Arabic, English, and Hebrew, remain inscribed at the front gates of the building:

“Here is a place whose atmosphere is Peace, Where Political and Religious Jealousies Can be Forgotten and International Unity Can be Fostered and Developed.” His speech was broadcast to a worldwide audience over the radio.

The event was attended by YMCA leaders from around the world. Details of the building, with its elegant arches, domes and tower, was described in the world press, which hailed it as a wellspring of cultural, athletic, social and intellectual life.

Damaged in the 1948 war that created the Jewish state, the first concert broadcasts of the Kol Israel (Voice of Israel) radio station were transmitted from the YMCA auditorium.

Before 1967, its popular observation tower afforded Jews a bird’s eye view of the nearby Old City and the Western Wall when the city was still divided between Israel and Jordan and Jews could not cross the urban boundary.

There is plenty of symbolism in the building’s detailed wall paintings and exquisite masonry meant to reflect inter-religious harmony. The 12 windows in the auditorium represent the 12 tribes of Israel, Jesus’ disciples, and Muhammad’s followers.

A high-domed bell tower thrusts out of the white-limestone façade of the building. The stately entrance, domed ceiling and tiled floors make it arguably the most beautiful Y in the world.

The building, which now also houses the Three Arches Hotel, has beautiful public areas with arches and lush gardens. The private terraces and café offers a charming meeting spot for tourists and those staying at the hotel. 

Along with its cultural, educational, and sports offerings, it runs community programs for Christian, Jewish and Muslim families, including conflict mitigation sessions. It serves as a gathering place for the city’s divided populations.

 

One could spend time wandering around the building and its porticos, or take the elevator to view the magnificent carillon bells, made in Croydon, England at the Gillett & Johnston bell foundry. When rung, you can hear the 35 bells throughout the city and there are sometimes concerts. 

And the viewing balconies on the sixth floor, for superb panoramic views of all parts of the city, are not to be missed.

Is Territorial Integrity Always Worth Defending?

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

There is a well-meaning term in international law that has, unfortunately, been causing a lot of trouble in the last few decades.

The principle of uti possiditis (Latin for “as you possess”) states that territory and other property remains with its possessor at the end of a conflict. It was designed to guarantee a new state’s territorial integrity from both outside aggressors and internal secessionists.

But the collapse of two Communist empires, the Soviet Union and Communist Yugoslavia, and the emergence of a host of new countries, had led to a “double standard,” in terms of the right to national self-determination for the successor states.

Both the Soviet Union and Communist Yugoslavia operated on the principle of ethno-federalism – a political system in which territorial governance units were explicitly designated as ethnic homelands. 

Hence their names: the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and so forth, in the USSR; the Socialist Republic of Croatia and the Socialist Republic of Serbia, and so on, in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

These republics occupied the highest level of the federal hierarchy. But numerous other titular units, though also named for ethnic groups, had a lesser status, and were nested within the full-fledged republics.

So, for example, in the USSR, Abkhazia was an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic within the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic and Chechnya was part of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the huge Russian Soviet Federative Soviet Republic (today’s Russian Federation).

In Yugoslavia, Kosovo, an Albanian-majority entity, was only a Socialist Autonomous Province, attached to the Socialist Republic of Serbia.

After the collapse of the multi-national empires, while the republics were accepted by the international order as newly sovereign polities, these lesser entities, though clearly also ethnically homogenous homeland nations, remained attached, despite their wishes, to the newly-independent jurisdictions they had been subservient to.

Suddenly, internal borders within larger entities that had meant little, became internationally-recognized frontiers. There were no referenda to determine the wishes of their populations, no partitions or adjustments to reflect ethnic or religious realities. It was, shall we say, a “lazy” way of dealing with the issue.

This has caused no end of grief. The Chechens fought two bloody wars following the dissolution of the Soviet Union to extricate themselves from the new Russian Federation. Abkhazia declared itself independent of Georgia, but the latter, committed to retaining the “territorial integrity” is possessed under the USSR, has attempted to reconquer it (and South Ossetia), leading to a war with Russia in 2005.

Kosovo did manage to finally gain its independence in 2008, but only after the intervention of NATO to drive the Serbs out in 1999. Serbia remains determined to recapture it should the relative military fortunes in the Balkans ever shift.

On the other hand, ethnically absurd creations like Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia, because they had been republics in the old Yugoslavia, were now deemed to be sovereign states – against the wishes of its Croat and Serb populations, who would have preferred to join their neighbouring kin in Croatia and Serbia, in the first case, and Albanians in the second.

In the case of Bosnia, this led to a horrific war in the 1990s and the deaths of tens of thousands of people in ethnic cleansing operations.

In discussing this absurd situation – nations which should be states but are not, and states which shouldn’t be independent but are -- in a class on Eastern Europe, I drew on a sports analogy.

Soccer leagues in most countries are divided into divisions, with the top teams in the first division, and the lesser ones in second and third divisions, and so forth.

Soviet and Yugoslav ethno-federalism worked along these lines. Full-fledged “socialist republics”– say Azerbaijan in the Soviet Union or Slovenia in Yugoslavia – were in the “first division.” But other places that were only “autonomous republics” or “autonomous regions” were in the secondary ranks.

When the USSR and Yugoslavia broke apart, only the “first division” republics were, by the “rules” of the international system, entitled to full sovereignty. For the others, despite their well-defined populations and territorial borders – it’s just too bad.

Think of the irony: the international community remains committed, in most of these cases, to uphold the sanctity of borders drawn up, fairly arbitrarily, and based on abstruse Marxist-Leninist theories of nationality, by Joseph Stalin, in the case of the USSR, and Josip Tito, for Yugoslavia.

Gen. Edmund Allenby’s Conquest of Jerusalem

By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

One of my favourite streets in Tel Aviv is Rehov Allenby. It starts at the Mediterranean promenade and runs through the centre of the city, bisecting other important thoroughfares such as Sderot Rothschild.

During the day, it is a commercial street with many small businesses and clothing stores, and serves as the entrance to the Carmel Market. In the evening, it becomes a hub of nightlife, known for its cafés, pubs and restaurants.

The street is named in honour of British Field Marshal Sir Edmund Allenby, the British general who directed the Palestine campaign in the First World War. He captured Jerusalem exactly one century ago.

Born in 1861, he enjoyed a privileged education and was commissioned into the army in 1882. He had already fought in many of Britain’s wars when, in June 1917, Allenby took command of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in the Middle East, with orders to capture Palestine from the Ottoman Empire.  

Known as ‘‘the Bull,” Allenby was instructed by Prime Minister David Lloyd George to take Jerusalem before Christmas.

Allenby won decisive victories over the Turks at Beersheba and Gaza that autumn and by early December his troops had advanced to the outskirts of Jerusalem.

On Dec. 8 the battle for the city began. By the next day, it was in the hands of the British, and Allenby entered the Old City on Dec. 11. 

Understanding the symbolic sensitivity of Jerusalem to both its residents and religious adherents the world over, Allenby, the first Christian conqueror of the Holy City since the Crusades, elected to make his entrance through the Jaffa Gate on foot.

He deliberately chose to walk into Jerusalem because, he said, only the Messiah should ride into the Holy City.

Among the officers marching behind him was T.E. Lawrence, known later as Lawrence of Arabia. “This was to me the most supreme moment of the war.” he would write of his Jerusalem experience.

At David’s Citadel, Allenby met the heads of the different communities in the city and declared martial law. Allenby stated that, while “Jerusalem the Blessed” would now governed by the British military, its inhabitants need not be unduly alarmed.  

He noted that “the population received me well” and assured them of his desire “that every person pursue his lawful business without fear of interruption.

 “Furthermore, since your city is regarded with affection by the adherents of three of the great religions of mankind and its soil has been consecrated by the prayers and pilgrimages of multitudes of devout people of these three religions for many centuries, therefore “every sacred building, monument, holy spot, shrine, traditional site, endowment, pious bequest, or customary place of prayer of whatsoever form of the three religions will be maintained and protected.”

As the next century would demonstrate, this has been no easy task.

Allenby, who retired in 1925, becoming Rector of Edinburgh University, died in London on May 14, 1936.  He is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Is the Two-State Solution Still Possible?

By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, NB] Telegraph-Journal

I have just returned from a three-week trip to Israel, where the interminable debate about the so-called “two-state solution” seems to go on forever

Though it’s been a quarter century since the Oslo Accords committed both Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to the creation of a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel, both of them within the boundaries of the pre-1948 British Palestine mandate, things have been stuck, despite endless negotiations and interventions by outside countries, particularly the United States.

This article isn’t going into the minutia of the various proposals put forward year after year  about the status of Jerusalem, the fate of Jewish settlements east of the 1949 “green line” boundary between Israel and what had been Jordan, and so on.

I instead examine the thinking on the Israeli side. It’s clear that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the religious nationalists in his Likud coalition would like to hold on to the West Bank forever.

They see biblical Judea and Samaria as Jewish land, the Arabs as interlopers and conquerors, who occupied it while Jews lacked sovereignty for almost two millennia.

Since Netanyahu can’t say this openly, his strategy is to prevaricate and keep kicking the can down the road, in the hope that at some future date world opinion will shift and Israel will be able to openly annex these territories.

He pretend to accept a future division of the land of Israel while at the same time creating “facts on the ground,” by allowing the continued settlement of Jews within the post-1967 territories administered by Israel.

His coalition colleagues, as well as many in his own Likud party, are allowed to campaign in favor of annexation without sanction or reprimand.

A popular new book published in Hebrew last March, Catch 67:The Ideas Behind the Controversy Tearing Israel Apart – the number refers to the 1967 Six-Day War -- discusses the growth of the messianic religious right in Israel.

The conception of the whole land of Israel as one that had been promised to the Jews by the international community has given way to the idea of the land promised by God, asserts author Micah Goodman, who teaches philosophy at the Hebrew University.

“By the end of the 20th century the dominant group on the right placed redemption at the center of things,” he writes. Theirs is a position that brooks no compromise

Of course legally incorporating the territories within the state of Israel, and giving the Palestinians citizenship, with full political rights, would in one fell swoop more than double the non-Jewish population of the country and create a recipe for endless ethnic strife.

Demography would eventually create a non-Jewish majority and put an end to the Israeli state.

Since Israeli nationalists obviously recoil in horror at this possibility, it follows logically that they would prefer to evict the Palestinians. The map of Europe after 1945 is their preferred template.

In 1945, following Hitler’s defeat in the Second World War, the Soviets and Poles not only annexed large areas of pre-war Germany, but also expelled their German populations. Czechoslovakia did the same.

In today’s climate, Israel clearly can’t do this. So Netanyahu and religious nationalists probably anticipate a major war in the region at some future date between the Jewish state and an Iranian-led coalition that would include Arab armed support.

Such a cataclysmic conflict would either see Israel defeated and probably extinguished, or result in an Israeli victory which, as in 1948-49, would facilitate major population transfers in the region.

This would make the West Bank relatively free of its Palestinian inhabitants and so it could become part of a continuing Jewish-majority state.

No one can say this out loud, of course, but logic seems to dictate that this Armageddon is for the right-wing in Israel the preferred solution.

Remember, while the right-wing Zionists want all of the “Land of Israel,” so too do the militant Palestinian Muslims, except they call it “Palestine.”

So the whole endless “peace process” between Israelis and Palestinians will fade into history, the way the Cold War did, and an altogether new map will emerge. We have no idea what it will look like.

Growing American Military Aid to Israel

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

Although Israel has been the recipient of massive amounts of aid from Washington since 1967, until now there has been no permanent American military presence on Israeli soil.

That changed a few months ago, when the U.S. Army opened a base, flying the Stars and Stripes, inside an Israeli military post.

“Due to the close cooperation between us and the American forces in the field of air defence, as well as the extensive experience accumulated by the Aerial Defence Division, it was decided that the first permanent base of the American army would be established at the School of Air Defence," Brigadier General Zvika Haimovich, announced on Sept. 18.

The facility, located inside the Israeli Air Force’s Mashabim Air Base, west of the towns of Dimona and Yerucham, will be run by the U.S. military’s European Command. Several dozen American soldiers will be stationed there.

Haimovich emphasized that this step was not a direct response to any specific incident, but comes in light of the intelligence analysis of future dangers. “We have many enemies around us, near and far.”

Mohammed Abu Allan, a West Bank-based journalist who covers Israeli affairs, told the website Al-Monitor that the new base was established “in light of attempts by Hamas and Hezbollah to obtain high-precision rockets.”

It will allow Israel to intercept long-range missiles in its next potential war with them “and their main ally Iran.”

Israel's multi-tier missile defence system already includes the Arrow, designed to intercept long-range ballistic missiles in the stratosphere with an eye on Iran, and Iron Dome, which defends against short-range rockets from the Gaza Strip. David's Sling is meant to counter the type of medium-range missiles possessed by Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants.

Abu Allan noted that in a speech at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on Sept. 8, former Israel Defence Forces Deputy Chief of Staff Yair Golan said Israel cannot handle Iran alone.

Abu Allan also indicated that the Iranian presence in Syria is one of the top security and political priorities of Israel, pointing out that the U.S. military post in Israel may also have to do with countering the increasing Russian military presence in Syria, where Russia has stationed   advanced S-300 and S-400 surface-to-air batteries.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration continues to challenge Iran over its advanced weapons programs, including development of ballistic missiles.

The new military base is an additional indicator of the importance of the cooperation between the Americans and the Israelis, which has also involved the completion of a deal signed in November 2016 to purchase 17 F-35 Joint Strike fighter jets.

These are poised to become a key tool to help Israel stop Iran and its proxies from creating a threatening military outpost in Syria. They will also play a leading role against Hezbollah’s heavily armed fortress in Lebanon.

“The F-35 is an intelligence-gathering machine in a league of its own. It is able to deploy a range of sensors to gather detailed information on events on the ground,” according to Yaakov Lappin, a research associate at the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies in Ramat Gan, Israel.

It can fuse unprecedented quantities of intelligence automatically, then share it with other aircraft and with ground control stations.

After Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election, “the U.S.-Israeli political relationship got more intimate and the launch of the first U.S. military base in Israel may be the perfect proof,” suggested Islam Moussa, an expert in military affairs at the Palestinian National Security Research Department of the PLO Planning Centre in Ramallah.

“But the timing of this announcement may also be interpreted in light of the Russian expansion in the region.”

Haimovich noted that Israel’s collaboration with the Americans on air defence will again be seen in February, when the two militaries launch the Juniper Cobra exercise.

The annual exercise tests the response of the two nations against the threat of a large-scale missile attack. Thousands of Israeli and American soldiers take part.

Also, while I was in Israel in November, eight air forces, including those of the U.S., Germany, India, and Poland, participated in the two-week Blue Flag drill,  the country’s largest aerial exercise ever.

Lebanon’s Sad History Continues

By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

It’s been 74 years since France set Lebanon free, yet this tiny country has had very little of freedom.

Instead, this politically splintered land, populated by numerous and contending religious sects, emerged as an arena for other people’s wars.

Its sovereignty is as compromised as ever by the agendas of foreign states that have shaped its history since the French mandate ended on Nov. 22, 1943.

The future was hinted at in 1958, when Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and American President Dwight Eisenhower sparred in Lebanon, inviting an American invasion.

In the 1970s, things got much worse. First, the Palestine Liberation Organisation controlled much of the country prior to 1982, and Yasser Arafat used Lebanon for his attacks on Israel. 

In 1982, Israel sent its army all the way to Beirut, driving out the PLO. It occupied a southern strip of the country until 2000. 

Then Syria fueled a Muslim-Christian war, before invading the country it would occupy for 29 years. 

The 1976-1990 civil war cost over 120,000 lives. Many Lebanese politicians have been assassinated as well, including former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, father of the state’s current prime minister, in 2005.

The Syrians finally left that year, after a wave of popular protests and international pressure following the Hariri assassination.

Finally, following Iran’s Islamist revolution, the neglected Shi’ite south, under Hezbollah, created a radical state within a state. 

Having finally seen Syria and Israel leave, and after having restored a modicum of peace between Christians and Muslims, Lebanon today finds itself, like neighbouring Syria, along the Sunni-Shi’ite fault line.

The small country is now a battleground in the struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran for influence in the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia is Iran’s arch foe in the region. The Saudis support Syria’s armed opposition while Iran and the Shi’ite group Hezbollah both support Bashar al-Assad’s government.

Much speculation has circulated about what might come next for Lebanon in the wake of Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s Nov. 4 surprise resignation while in Riyadh. 

Hariri, who occupies the position allocated to Lebanese Sunnis, attributed his move to the behaviour of Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon itself. 

But Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah wants to maintain the compromise achieved with the election in 2016 of President Michel Aoun, a Christian ally of Hezbollah, which led to the formation of a 30-member cabinet, led by Hariri. It includes the party.

Hezbollah blames the Saudis, the defenders of Sunni Islam and enemies of Iran, of orchestrating Hariri’s resignation, in order to push back against it.

Hariri is now back in Beirut and, for the moment, has resumed his position. Opponents of Hariri have labeled him as an instrument of Saudi policy. He is also backed by France, the former colonial power, and the United States.

Speaking during a meeting with the Higher Islamic Council, the official body for the country’s Sunni Muslims, on Nov. 25, he warned Hezbollah against interfering in regional conflicts, saying he withdrew his resignation to discuss ways to disassociate Lebanon from wars in neighbouring countries.

Hariri stressed that Lebanon was being targeted and that it risked being dragged into chaos. “As we have previously announced on several occasions, we will not accept Hezbollah’s positions that affect our Arab brothers or target the security and stability of their countries,” he added.

But Lebanon’s sectarian political system, whereby its parliament and key offices are pre-allocated according to religious affiliation, has left the country bereft of any sense of unity that might transcend religious affiliation.

“The most important thing in a country like Lebanon is to understand that independence is a battle that does not stop,” remarked Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk, a member of Hariri’s al-Mustaqbal (Future Movement). 

As Tammy Qazhya, a Lebanese rights promoter, recently stated,.”The idea that Lebanon is an independent state is a lie.” So Lebanon remains a fractured state of contending militias and warlords.