Report:QatarscuttledGazacease-firefornothaving

Report: Qatar scuttled Gaza cease-fire for not having seat at Cairo table

posted at 10:01 am on August 20, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Interestingly, this report comes not from a Western or Israeli source but from “a senior Fatah official” who spoke with Al-Hayat, a pan-Arab newspaper based in London. The Jerusalem Post picks up the story from Al-Hayat, in which the official from the rival Palestinian faction blames yesterday’s cease-fire violation by Hamas on Qatar, which has long hosted Hamas leadership. The Qataris refused to allow Khaled Mashaal to approve a longer-term truce with Israel without their participation in the talks, and threatened to kick Mashaal out of the country unless he began waging war again to pressure Egypt into an invitation:

A senior Fatah official is quoted by the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat as saying that the Qatari government threatened to expel the Hamas political bureau chief, Khaled Mashaal, if the Palestinian Islamist group agreed to the Egyptian cease-fire proposal. …

The Fatah official told Al-Hayat that Hamas has insisted that Qatar be given a seat at the negotiating table in Cairo. According to the official, Hamas wants either the Qatari foreign minister or the head of intelligence to be permitted to take part in the discussions.

Egypt has adamantly refused to permit Qatar to participate in the cease-fire talks, according to the report. Cairo wants a Qatari apology for the government’s policies toward Egypt since the military coup against the Muslim Brotherhood brought Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to power.

If so, that puts the US in a difficult spot. Several American administrations have tried to build up an alliance with the Qataris, and we recently sold them $11 billion in military equipment to sweeten the relationship. Even more recently, Barack Obama cut a deal with the Taliban for the release of Bowe Bergdahl that included the release of five of the most dangerous Taliban figures in Guantanamo, who will spend the next year under the supervision of the same Qataris. If this report from the “senior Fatah official” is true, then it considerably undermines what little confidence Americans had in the Bergdahl swap, among other things.

Among those other things is John Kerry, Jeff Dunetz argues:

If the Al-Hayat report is true then the break down of talks falls directly at the feet of John Kerry. It was the United States Secretary of State who initially brought Qatar into the talks over the objections of Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority. Now that those parties have frozen out the terrorist-funding Qatar, the Qatari government want to make sure they don’t succeed.

That’s true even if this report isn’t. The idea to rope Turkey and Qatar into the process was a dumb idea from the beginning, as it legitimized Hamas as a governing organization rather than treated them as the terrorist group that they are. It cut the knees out from under the Palestinian Authority as well, with whom Israel had at least some basis of cooperation in the West Bank. That brings us to whether this report can be trusted, however. Fatah has every reason to pin failure on Qatar in order to keep them out of the peace talks. Qatar will favor Hamas over Fatah in any settlement in which they participate, so it’s in Fatah’s interest as well as Egypt’s to keep them locked out of the talks.

As to the identity of the “senior Fatah official” who spoke to Al-Hayat, don’t forget who went to Qatar this week: Mahmoud Abbas. He was set to meet with Mashaal today or tomorrow to discuss the peace talks, but that was scheduled prior to Israel uncovering the Hamas coup plot against the Palestinian Authority. To say that there is motivation to marginalize Hamas and its Qatari backers is to engage in understatement.

Egypt, meanwhile, is not about to invite the Qataris or anyone else backing Hamas to these talks. They are fighting their own insurgency in the Sinai, for which they blame the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the parent organization of Hamas. Today they found four beheaded corpses near a village in the peninsula, and Reuters reports that this is part of a stepped-up terror campaign by MB-linked groups protesting the al-Sisi military government:

Four beheaded corpses were found by residents of a town in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on Wednesday, security sources said, blaming Islamist militants waging an insurgency against Cairo.

The security sources in Sinai and Cairo, said residents of Sheikh Zuwaid found the bodies two days after the men were abducted by gunmen while traveling in a car in the town, a few kilometers from the Gaza Strip.

Though the men were civilians, they may have been targeted for their perceived allegiance to the police and army, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity. They gave no other indication of the identity of the men.

The militants have stepped up attacks on policemen and soldiers since then-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi toppled President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in July 2013.

The government does not distinguish between the Sinai militants and the Brotherhood, which it has designated a terrorist group although the movement says it is peaceful and denies any links to the wave of militant attacks.

In other words, Cairo won’t be particularly well disposed to nations who fund MB-related groups anyway, and that probably applies particularly to Hamas. If John Kerry wants to be useful, he should apply American pressure on Qatar to butt out of the Gaza peace process, or kick Mashaal out for good and let him take his own chances in Gaza City rather than cheer on war from the safety of Doha. The Israelis are targeting Hamas leadership now that Hamas has broken another cease-fire, but Mashaal might have more to fear from other Gazans if he shows up in the enclave.

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Tags: Egypt, Fatah, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, John Kerry, Khaled Mashaal, Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Authority, Qatar

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Ooops.GermansapparentlywerespyingonKerry,Hillary

Ooops. Germans apparently were spying on Kerry, Hillary Clinton

posted at 4:01 pm on August 16, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

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Well, this is certainly going to be awkward all the way around, though completely predictable.

German secret agents intercepted one of Hillary Clinton’s phone calls while she was US secretary of state and also listened in to a call by John Kerry, her successor, it emerged this weekend, in an embarrassing reversal of the spying scandal that blew up when it was revealed last year that America bugged Angela Merkel’s mobile phone.

Mrs Clinton was on a US government plane when German intelligence services overheard her call and, against their own internal protocol, stored it, intelligence sources told German media.

The intercepted phone call took place in 2012 between Mrs Clinton and Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, who had just returned from negotiations in Syria and wanted to brief her, the German weekly Der Spiegel reported on Saturday.

Der Spiegel also claimed that agents from the state intelligence services listened in on a phone call by John Kerry, the current US secretary of state – and that Germany has been spying on its NATO ally Turkey since 2009.

Can we just start from the default point of acknowledging that, regardless of how outraged everyone likes to act, all of the allies are probably spying on each other, or at least trying to? Israel spies on us, Germany spies on us, we spy on everyone. We might let Canada off the hook here because, honestly, who cares what the Canadians are up to unless it involves taking Justin Beiber back. The interesting part of the German “explanation” here is how they characterize the interception of Kerry’s phone call.

German intelligence sources have tried to minimise the impact of the revelations by explaining that the interception of the phone calls of both secretaries of state was only done “by accident”.

The secret agents had not meant to hear Mrs Clinton’s call or to keep the recording of it, according to a joint media investigation published on Friday by Sudddeutsche Zeitung, a German broadsheet newspaper and NDR and WDR, two German regional public broadcasting outlets.

A source told the outlets that the fact that the recording of the phone call had not been immediately destroyed, as is apparently routinely done if allies’ phone calls are picked up by accident, was “idiocy”.

Wait… so you picked up – and recorded – a call from our Secretary of State by accident? How exactly does that happen? You’re going through the mail and suddenly there’s a DVD there which you assume is for more free minutes from America On Line, but when you pop it into your laptop… oops!

Also, just how bad is our data protection that SecState calls are being routinely intercepted and “destroyed” by our friends?

In any event, this will likely require some backtracking from Angela Merkel. You may recall her speech when she demanded “action” from the United States to “rebuild the shattered trust” between our nations. And these intercepted phone calls took place well before the revelations of our spying on them, so this wasn’t some sort of tit for tat maneuver.

A bit of a sticky wicket, eh? Oh, wait.. .that’s the Brits.

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LeakstoWSJhighlightdeterioratingUS-Israelrelationship

Leaks to WSJ highlight deteriorating US-Israel relationship

posted at 9:21 am on August 14, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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What are we to conclude from this lengthy analysis from the Wall Street Journal about the fight over Israeli munition purchases from the US and cooperation on policy? On the surface, Adam Entous’ report focuses on the supposed outrage over Israel bypassing the White House to buy much-needed replacements for mortar and tank shells, but it also shows that the relationship between the two governments — at least in regard to the executive branch in the US — has hit its lowest ebb in memory. And it might also be the result of a hostile White House trying to lash out at the Israelis for rebuking them over John Kerry’s cease-fire maneuvering, too.

First, the White House expressed alarm and outrage over Israel’s resupply of munitions that happened without their approval:

White House and State Department officials who were leading U.S. efforts to rein in Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip were caught off guard last month when they learned that the Israeli military had been quietly securing supplies of ammunition from the Pentagon without their approval.

Since then the Obama administration has tightened its control on arms transfers to Israel. But Israeli and U.S. officials say that the adroit bureaucratic maneuvering made it plain how little influence the White House and State Department have with the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu —and that both sides know it. …

Unknown to many policy makers, Israel was moving on separate tracks to replenish supplies of lethal munitions being used in Gaza and to expedite approval of the Iron Dome funds on Capitol Hill.

On July 20, Israel’s defense ministry asked the U.S. military for a range of munitions, including 120-mm mortar shells and 40-mm illuminating rounds, which were already kept stored at a pre-positioned weapons stockpile in Israel.

The request was approved through military channels three days later but not made public. Under the terms of the deal, the Israelis used U.S. financing to pay for $3 million in tank rounds. No presidential approval or signoff by the secretary of state was required or sought, according to officials.

A U.S. defense official said the standard review process was properly followed.

If the standard review process was followed, then why was the White House “caught off guard”? Isn’t it incumbent on the Obama administration to know how the sale and transfer process works?  Israel had conducted a ground war — much to the chagrin of Obama and his “policymakers” — for a few weeks. Why wouldn’t anyone have expected Israel to replenish its supplies? Surely there are a few people who may have at least watched Patton if not studied Clausewitz in this administration. Resupply is a basic function for any army at war.

Surprise in this case springs from willful ignorance, as Jeff Dunetz notes. On Morning Joe today, Jim Miklaszewski told Joe Scarborough that the stockpiles in Israel are routinely tapped for resupply, and that the Pentagon knew all about it at the time — even discussing it openly with the press when the transfer occurred. Miklaszewski scoffed at the notion that the White House would have been caught off-guard about it unless they wanted some plausible deniability:

Miklaszewski: When this issue arose people at the Pentagon were discussing it openly because at the time it was considered a pro forma exchange. These weapons, primarily munitions actually are forward located in a stockpile in Israel that are under the control of the U.S. government so that in an emergency, if the Israeli government needs munitions in a hurry, it’s there.

Scarborough: but, Jim, doesn’t the Commander in Chief need to define what an emergency is and what an emergency is not doing? I mean, I’m surprised that somebody at the Pentagon, in a situation this political, you and I both know that the more stars are on a general’s shoulders, the more political they are, the more politically astute most of them are. I’m stunned they wouldn’t pick up the phone saying, hey, we got this request from Israel.

Miklaszewski: I don’t know that it happened that way but officials here [the Pentagon] at the time, described it as a prearranged pro forma exchange between the U.S. and Israel in terms of providing them ammunition. And I can tell you when we asked questions about it here at the time, there was nobody that was attempting to side step the issue, doing the tap dance. They said, oh, yeah, we did it, blah, blah, and here it is. So I can’t tell you if, in fact, there was anybody here at the Pentagon that was trying to undercut the State Department or the White House. And quite frankly, with the iron hand in which the White House rules this building, they don’t sneeze here without waiting for the White House to say gezuntheit. That is not far from the truth. For a minute I can’t believe personally that people here at the Pentagon were trying to purposely hide this transfer of munitions or undercut the White House.

So this leak from the White House about the Israelis sneaking around them is simply nonsense. Time’s Joe Klein wonders aloud why the Obama administration wants to make a stink about this now. “What it really calls into question,” Klein says, “is why the White House is so ticked off about this now.”

Let’s go back to the WSJ for an answer to that question:

Now, as Egyptian officials shuttle between representatives of Israel and Hamas seeking a long-term deal to end the fighting, U.S. officials are bystanders instead of in their historic role as mediators. The White House finds itself largely on the outside looking in.

U.S. officials said Mr. Obama had a particularly combative phone call on Wednesday with Mr. Netanyahu, who they say has pushed the administration aside but wants it to provide Israel with security assurances in exchange for signing onto a long-term deal.

The answer is simple, and easy to deconstruct by reverse-engineering this petulant leak to Entous. Israel (and probably Egypt too) has marginalized John Kerry after the Secretary of State attempted to legitimize Hamas by attempting to negotiate through Qatar and Turkey. That leaves Barack Obama out in the cold, but still making demands on Israel to be flexible in the final truce settlement. Netanyahu wants Obama to make concessions in exchange for that flexibility. That has angered Obama, who finds himself all but impotent in the matter — which is why we have this big leak about the deteriorating relations between Washington and Jerusalem.

The issue of munition resupply is simply a contrivance at this point. The White House wants to erode Israel’s influence on Congress to break out of its no-win position of the moment, but expressing outrage over their own incompetence at keeping up with routine transfers in a system designed to provide them won’t make Obama and his team look any more sympathetic. It just makes them look more incompetent, and gives Congress more reason to bypass the White House themselves as much as they can to keep the partnership with Israel going until Obama leaves office.

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Iran,USendorseMalikisuccessorHaideral-Abadi

Iran, US endorse Maliki successor Haider al-Abadi

posted at 9:21 am on August 12, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Iraq moved closer to ending its political crisis yesterday by finally selecting a new Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi. The decision by President Fuad Masum won approval from the US yesterday as Barack Obama didn’t even bother to mention his predecessor in a short statement from his vacation on Martha’s Vineyard. The wheels on the American bus weren’t the only ones that Nouri al-Maliki felt, either, as Iran endorsed Abadi as well:

Iraq’s new prime minister-designate won swift endorsements from both the United States and Iran on Tuesday as he called on political leaders to end crippling feuds that have let jihadists seize a third of the country.

Haider al-Abadi still faces a threat closer to home, where his Shi’ite party colleague Nuri al-Maliki has refused to step aside after eight years as premier that have alienated Iraq’s once dominant Sunni minority and irked Washington and Tehran. …

Underscoring the convergence of interest in Iraq that marks the normally hostile relationship between Washington and Iran, the head of Tehran’s National Security Council congratulated Abadi on his nomination. Like Western powers, Iran has been alarmed by the rise of Sunni militants across Syria and Iraq.

Abadi himself, long exiled in Britain, is seen as far less polarizing, sectarian figure than Maliki, who is also from the Shi’ite Islamic Dawa party. Abadi appears to have the blessing of Iraq’s powerful Shi’ite clergy.

That puts Maliki, currently holding out with his elite military in Baghdad, in a tight spot. Until now, Maliki appeared to have the backing of Iran and the majority of Shi’ites in Iraq, thanks to his distribution of the spoils of power and his friendliness with Tehran. Iran, though, sees ISIS as a major threat to their own position and have finally come to the conclusion that the only way to mitigate it is to have a viable Iraq as a buffer state, at least. That means working with Sunnis and Kurds, and Maliki clearly isn’t the man for that mission.

Speaking of the military in Baghdad, there are indications that Maliki may not enjoy their loyalty for much longer, either:

However, a senior government official said commanders of military forces that Maliki deployed around Baghdad on Monday had pledged loyalty to President Fouad Masoum and to respect the head of state’s decision to ask Abadi to form a new government.

The key for Abadi will be to allow the Sunnis and Kurds to once again occupy senior positions in the government and military. Maliki purged them from those positions over the last three years, which forced the Sunni tribal chiefs to throw in with ISIS and the Kurds to look for independence. It may be too late to keep the Kurds within a unitary state in Iraq, but the Sunni chiefs will soon tire of ISIS’ despotic and ghastly rule. Abadi will have a narrow window in which to get them back in the fold, but there should be a realistic chance of turning them once again.

The last time that happened, though, the US military was the guarantor of the alliance that defeated the then-AQI insurgency. There is no US military presence now to act as guarantor, so the Sunnis may have some …. trust issues with Baghdad, to say the least. And while the US is pledging cooperation with the Abadi government once the Cabinet positions have been filled, a new military presence is not on the table:

The United States will consider additional military, economic and political assistance to Iraq once a new inclusive government is formed, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Tuesday. …

“We are prepared to consider additional political, economic and security options as Iraq’s government starts to build a new government,” Kerry told a news conference together with Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and their Australian counterparts.

Hagel said the United States was prepared to consider further military support in Iraq. Kerry ruled out U.S. combat troops on the ground.

“We would wait and see what future requests this new government will ask of us and we will consider it based on those requests,” Hagel said.

The “no boots on the ground” strategy will only work if Abadi can unite the Iraqi army and raise its morale exponentially within a very short period of time. Part of that will depend on whether Maliki now leaves quietly (perhaps with some pressure from Iran?), or decides to play dog-in-the-manger and pull Baghdad down on top of all heads. Even if Maliki leaves with his blessing for Abadi, restoring the Iraqi military into an effective fighting force on its own against ISIS seems like sheer fantasy without Western intervention. If we aren’t going to fight ISIS on the ground, we’d better start giving the Kurds the means to do it now, and on a much larger scale than presently seen.

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Tags: Haider al-Abadi, Iran, Iraq, ISIS, John Kerry, Nouri al-Maliki

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KerrywarnsMalikiasPM’sforcespositionthemselves

Kerry warns Maliki as PM’s forces position themselves in Baghdad

posted at 8:01 am on August 11, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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It’s no secret how the US feels about Nouri al-Maliki. The Obama administration has sat on its hands while Iraq comes apart at the seams in part because the White House wants to avoid propping up Maliki, who has spent the last three years alienating the Sunnis and Kurds, weakening Iraq to the point of collapse against ISIS. The US wants Maliki out in order to get a government in Baghdad that can re-engage the coalition put together by the Bush administration in the Anbar Awakening so that the Iraqi military can by itself face the threat without forcing the US to intervene militarily beyond a few air strikes.

After Maliki’s surprise address last night, though, the US doesn’t appear to have much sway. The current Prime Minister deployed special forces loyal to himself in Baghdad in what looks very much like a coup to prevent the new parliament from electing his successor:

Special forces loyal to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki were deployed in strategic areas of Baghdad on Sunday night after he delivered a tough speech indicating he would not cave in to pressure to drop a bid for a third term, police sources told Reuters. Pro-Maliki Shiite militias stepped up patrols in the capital, police said. An eyewitness said a tank was stationed at the entrance to Baghdad’s Green Zone, which houses government buildings. “We can see unprecedented deployment of army commandos and special elite forces … in Baghdad, especially sensitive areas,” one of the police sources said. The report could not immediately by confirmed by NBC News.

CNN offers this first-person perspective from the capital:

Secretary of State John Kerry warned Maliki against a coup, and lined up behind the new President, Kurdish politician Fuad Masum:

US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday warned Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki not to cause trouble as he threw his weight behind newly-elected President Fuad Masum to help fight Islamic militants. …

“We stand absolutely squarely behind President Masum (who) has the responsibility for upholding the constitution of Iraq,” Kerry said in Sydney, where he will attend annual US-Australia military talks.

“He is the elected president and at this moment Iraq clearly made a statement that they are looking for change.”

NBC reported that the US is “watching carefully” what happens next in Baghdad, while thousands of Yazidis escaped from the ISIS noose in the last couple of days. The Kurdish Peshmerga regained some territory as ISIS had to deal with American airstrikes:

The Daily Mail says that the US has begun to bypass Baghdad and send arms directly to the Kurds:

The Obama administration has begun directly providing weapons to Kurdish forces who have started to make gains against Islamic militants in northern Iraq, senior U.S. officials said today.

Previously, the U.S. had insisted on only selling arms to the Iraqi government in Baghdad, but the Kurdish peshmerga fighters had been losing ground to Islamic State (IS) fighters in recent weeks. …

The U.S. officials wouldn’t say which U.S. agency is providing the arms or what weapons are being sent, but one official said it isn’t the Pentagon.

Three guesses who’s arming the Peshmerga, and the first two don’t count. Kerry’s bluster aside, the US has no real influence in Baghdad any longer, which the White House made clear with its earlier unmet demands for political reform as a prerequisite for intervention. Maliki made it official last night. The only option left to the US is to arm the Kurds to get an effective fight against ISIS, and apparently leave Baghdad to Iran. If Masum can wrest power away from Maliki and get a Shi’a PM who can work with Kurds and Sunnis, that would be terrific — but he might have to fight through Maliki’s elite forces and Moqtada al-Sadr’s irregulars to have a chance now, and the US endorsement will hardly be a boon to that cause.

Update: In case you didn’t get it in three guesses …

CIA is now providing weapons directly to Kurdish forces fighting ISIS in Northern Iraq, officials tell @JimMiklaszewski

— NBC News (@NBCNews) August 11, 2014

Expect that to shift to the Pentagon soon enough, though. The US has no particular reason to do this covertly now that Maliki’s attempting to hijack the political process.

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Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, coup, Iraq, John Kerry, Kurds, Nouri al-Maliki, Yazidis

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Kerry,BidenwarnRussiaovercrossingUkraineborder

Kerry, Biden warn Russia over crossing Ukraine border for “humanitarian” missions

posted at 9:31 am on August 10, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

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And this time, they mean it.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, on Saturday that “Russia should not intervene in Ukraine under the guise of humanitarian convoys or any other pretext of ‘peacekeeping,’” according to a senior State Department official.
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Kerry urged “all parties to work through international organizations” to provide humanitarian assistance in eastern Ukraine, the official said.

In a separate call Saturday, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko agreed that any Russian action in Ukraine, even for purported “humanitarian” purposes, without the formal, express consent and authorization of the Ukraine government would be “unacceptable and a violation of international law,” according to the White House.

I first caught this story this morning on CNN’s New Day, where Victor Blackwell was conducting an interview with a field reporter on the subject. (Looking for the video on this.) To his credit, Blackwell asked the same question that jumped to my mind immediately. If you draw a line and tell someone not to cross it, but they do, then you draw another line, what motivation do they have to not just cross it again?

Given Vladimir Putin’s recent proclivities, this seems like an invitation to disaster. Issuing orders to Moscow along the lines of, don’t you dare cross the border for your so called humanitarian missions, is just the excuse Putin needs to inform the world that Barack Obama does not run Russian foreign policy. And now that the issue of the need for humanitarian aid to the people afflicted by the conflict has been raised, the temptation is probably even greater. As we talked about yesterday, if Putin was thinking about a direct military incursion into the area around Donetsk, he might have still had the sense to hold back because of the international reaction. But if you can take 20,000 troops and hand them all a care package, the propaganda stage is set for the usual Putin theatrics. Send in the troops while claiming that they are there to “provide humanitarian relief” and then, if an errant shot goes off and they begin firing back, well… it just couldn’t be avoided.

If threats from the United States actually had any weight behind them, Putin would probably be more likely to keep his cards close to the vest and look for a way out of this while saving face. But he seems to have no fear of America at this point, so don’t be shocked if this “relief mission” heads into the Donetsk region, tanks and all.

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DidIsraelsnooponKerry? postedat

Did Israel snoop on Kerry?

posted at 12:41 pm on August 4, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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After more than a year on defense over allies snooping on allies, the US might have some reason to go on offense. Der Spiegel claimed yesterday that Israeli intelligence listened in on conversations between Secretary of State John Kerry and other entities last year while Kerry attempted to reach a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. According to Der Spiegel’s sources, Israel wasn’t the only country snooping on Kerry’s calls, either:

SPIEGEL has learned from reliable sources that Israeli intelligence eavesdropped on US Secretary of State John Kerry during Middle East peace negotiations. In addition to the Israelis, at least one other intelligence service also listened in as Kerry mediated last year between Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab states, several intelligence service sources told SPIEGEL. Revelations of the eavesdropping could further damage already tense relations between the US government and Israel.

The US might have cause to be angry … except that Kerry apparently made it pretty easy for snoopers to snoop:

During the peak stage of peace talks last year, Kerry spoke regularly with high-ranking negotiating partners in the Middle East. At the time, some of these calls were not made on encrypted equipment, but instead on normal telephones, with the conversations transmitted by satellite. Intelligence agencies intercepted some of those calls. The government in Jerusalem then used the information obtained in international negotiations aiming to reach a diplomatic solution in the Middle East.

In other words, this isn’t quite the same as the NSA penetrating the cell phone of Angela Merkel, or at least not as it pertains to unsecured communications. If the US Secretary of State uses unsecured communications for sensitive talks, then that reflects more on the US than it does on whoever else listened in on those conversations. After all, the unspoken truth in the international dust-up over the NSA’s operations is that all countries gather intelligence, even on their friends, just to make sure they are remaining friendly if for no other reason. Some, like the French, snoop to gain commercial advantage, but most snoop to ensure that they don’t get any unpleasant surprises from enemies or friends.

Besides, the US has a pretty narrow platform on which to express anger over surveillance of their top officials after the Merkel wiretap embarrassment. The current administration has even less after Kerry’s poor performance in this latest crisis, in which he attempted to appease Hamas via Turkey and Qatar in order to get a cease-fire agreement. Kerry managed to claim that he had succeeded in getting a 72-hour humanitarian stoppage only to have Hamas double-cross him and attempt to use their tunnels to abduct an IDF soldier. That ended the cease fire after 90 minutes and resulted in Benjamin Netanyahu scolding Kerry and warning him “not to ever second guess me again.”

Netanyahu didn’t deny making that remark, although yesterday he did try to put a more positive spin on it:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not deny a report that he told U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro “not to ever second guess me again” on how to deal with Hamas, though he said the report did not reflect the general “tone and substance” of the calls. …

In his news conference Saturday night, Netanyahu attempted to lump in the Associated Press report, which neither American nor Israeli officials have denied, with a supposed transcript of a phone call between Obama and Netanyahu that has been widely rejected as bogus by officials in both governments.

“There is a lot of support and we deeply appreciate it, and that is the substance of our relationship, that’s the tone of our relationship, which gets to the question of these reports that are not only of my conversation with Ambassador Shapiro but also with the President that are full of incorrections, full of distortions and are wrong in both tone and substance.”

In other words, Netanyahu may have intended that as friendly advice. Perhaps he could have offered more in the same vein, such as: You may want to think about hardening your comms security, old sport.

So who was the other intelligence agency that penetrated Kerry’s calls? Der Spiegel doesn’t say, but don’t be surprised if the contents start leaking in Russian, tovarishch.

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NetanyahutoUS:Don’tpushatruceon

Netanyahu to US: Don’t push a truce on us again

posted at 11:31 am on August 2, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Most people would have learned their lesson after trusting a terrorist group to keep their word, but John Kerry and Barack Obama aren’t most people. Benjamin Netanyahu apparently felt the need to make the lesson more explicit, as the Associated Press reports today. The Israeli Prime Minister also offered a warning about the US’ new friends, the Qataris:

Following the quick collapse of the cease-fire in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the White House not to force a truce with Palestinian militants on Israel.

Sources familiar with conversations between Netanyahu and senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, say the Israeli leader advised the Obama administration “not to ever second guess me again” on the matter. The officials also said Netanyahu said he should be “trusted” on the issue and about the unwillingness of Hamas to enter into and follow through on cease-fire talks.

The Obama administration on Friday condemned “outrageous” violations of an internationally brokered Gaza cease-fire by Palestinian militants and called the apparent abduction of an Israeli soldier a “barbaric” action.

The strong reaction came as top Israeli officials questioned the effort to forge the truce, accusing the U.S. and the United Nations of being naive in assuming the radical Hamas movement would adhere with its terms. The officials also blamed the Gulf state of Qatar for not forcing the militants to comply.

Yesterday, Hamas denied that any Israeli soldier was captured, but that doesn’t match up with their own claims:

PJ Media’s The Grid notes that Hamas initially bragged about capturing the IDF soldier to Turkish media — and then began changing their story four different times after getting almost universal condemnation for the collapse of the cease fire. By the time of the CNN interview above, Hamas had gone from bragging about the operation to claiming it was a false-flag provocation by Israel to end the cease fire. Even without the Twitter trail, though, this claim made no sense. The cease-fire benefited the Israelis in the short run, not the least by humiliating Hamas and (briefly) tying their hands while denying every one of their demands. The cease fire was on the basis of the Egyptian proposal that Hamas had repeatedly rejected, and their sudden reversal was curious at the time — and now seems obviously to have been a ruse.

The New York Times reported earlier this week that Arab nations had been curiously silent about the Israeli actions in Gaza. CNN followed up with a review of reactions to Hamas’ war from the surrounding Sunni states, which ranges from deafening silence to outright condemnation … of either Hamas or “state-sponsored terrorism.” And that was before Hamas broke the cease-fire agreement:

In other words, Kerry and Obama didn’t just ignore Netanyahu, but also Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia in dealing with Hamas through Qatar and Turkey. Perhaps instead of dispensing advice, Kerry and Obama should start taking some from Netanyahu. That way it won’t be quite as obvious the next time they have to hear I told you so! from the Israeli PM.

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Tags: Barack Obama, Benjamin Netanyahu, cease fire, Gaza, Hamas, John Kerry

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WhiteHouseslamsHamas’“barbaric”kidnapping,cease-fireviolations

White House slams Hamas’ “barbaric” kidnapping, cease-fire violations

posted at 12:41 pm on August 1, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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As Noah noted earlier, it didn’t take long for the cease-fire in Gaza to fall apart — and the White House didn’t take it too kindly. Press secretary Josh Earnest slammed Hamas “individuals” who “used the cover of a humanitarian cease-fire to attack Israeli soldiers and even take one hostage.” There doesn’t seem to be too much nuance here, except for the blaming of “individuals” — which would hardly be the case had it been Israeli soldiers who violated the cease-fire:

This shows once again just how large the tunnels loom in any attempt to end the IDF’s operations in Gaza. That soldier, a second lieutenant in the IDF, has been confirmed missing by Israel, although his fate is still unclear:

The latest attempt at an Israel-Hamas cease-fire disintegrated Friday. After the capture of an Israeli soldier, the conflict edged closer to escalation than to peace.

The soldier was “abducted” by Palestinian militants during an attack in Gaza in which two other Israeli soldiers died, Israeli military Lt. Col. Peter Lerner told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. The soldiers were decommissioning a tunnel at the time, Lerner said.

The Israel Defense Forces earlier identified soldier as 2nd Lt. Hadar Goldin. A search operation is under way to find him, Lerner confirmed.

“We need to bring him home,” Lerner said later in the interview.

The rapid collapse of the cease-fire brokered by US Secretary of State John Kerry and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon puts egg on both faces. Kerry put the blame on Hamas in a statement earlier today:

Secretary of State John Kerry denounced as “outrageous” a militant attack that killed two Israeli soldiers and led to the alleged abduction. Saying it was an affront to assurances to respect the cease-fire given to the United States and United Nations, which brokered the truce. He demanded that the militant Hamas movement that controls Gaza move to “immediately and unconditionally release” the missing Israeli soldier.

“The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms today’s attack,” Kerry said in a statement released by the State Department as he was flying back to the U.S. from an official trip to India.

Kerry said he had spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the developments, which led Israel to declare the cease-fire over. Kerry said it would be a “tragedy if this outrageous attack leads to more suffering and loss of life on both sides of this conflict.”

“The international community must now redouble its efforts to end the tunnel and rocket attacks by Hamas terrorists on Israel and the suffering and loss of civilian life,” he said.

Kerry in particular had worked outside the box to get Hamas on board with a cease-fire, engaging at one time with Turkey and Qatar, two of Hamas’ allies, in order to find some way to stop their attacks so that Israel would halt operations in Gaza. Kerry mentioned neither in his announcement yesterday, but it’s difficult to see how anyone would have credited Hamas with an agreement to stop operations on the basis of the original Egyptian proposal alone, which is what happened yesterday, without getting some sort of assurances from Qatar, Turkey, or both that Hamas would stick to it. In retrospect, it’s either incredible naïveté on the part of the negotiators, or someone issued a guarantee that turned out to be worthless.

Speaking of the Qataris, does anyone else find this a little curious in relation to the US’ sudden interest in roping them into the Israeli-Palestinian peace process?

Qatar’s real estate investment arm decided in 2010 to pump $650 million into City Center, becoming the main owner of the $1 billion project on the site of the District’s old convention center in Northwest Washington. Last week, the first nine tenants moved into City Center apartments; office occupancy is expected next spring, with 40 shops opening in the fall.

Qatar had never invested in D.C. real estate before. And its spending spree didn’t stop there. The Qataris also invested in Chicago, where their Al Faisal Group last year bought the Radisson Blu Aqua hotel. The group has said it will seek other American properties. …

In recent weeks, Qatar Airways announced plans to expand its U.S. servicein 2014 by adding Dallas, Miami and Philadelphia to a lineup of destinations that includes Houston, Washington, New York and Chicago. And last month, Qatar said it will spend $19 billion to buy 50 Boeing 777 aircraft, part of a larger deal between the U.S. aviation company and Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

The number of Qatari students at U.S. universities has jumped fivefold in the past decade, and the Qatari Foundation International is spending $5 million this year to encourage U.S. schools to teach Arabic.

The surge in interest and investment in the United States by one of the world’s smallest countries is raising eyebrows and questions, many of which boil down to, “Why?”

Buying Current TV and turning it into Al Jazeera America made some sense, in terms of spreading the network’s brand, which had not caught on in the US through the Internet alone. This sudden infusion of billions in investment doesn’t seem to have that kind of obvious strategic sense, especially with their interest in prime Washington DC real estate. Given their friendly relations to Hamas, to whom the Qataris supply significant amounts of funds, it seems all the more curious. In 2009, the same John Kerry who asked Qatar to intervene with Hamas openly rejected Qatar as an ally of the US as long as they funded the terrorists of Hamas:

Before he joined the Obama administration, then-Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Kerry (D-Mass.) spoke out against Qatar’s relationship with Hamas.

“Qatar,” he told a Brookings Institution audience on March 4, 2009, “can’t continue to be an American ally on Monday that sends money to Hamas on Tuesday.”

“All Arab nations must increase their efforts at this critical juncture,” he said in the same speech. “The most vital and immediate contribution the Arab community can make right now is frankly to pressure Hamas to stop firing rockets …”

Perhaps Kerry thought he could use the leverage of the US alliance to force Qatar to make good on his 2009 demand. If that’s what he thought, though, Kerry proved himself very much mistaken in 2014 while more or less correct in 2009. However this cease fire came together, its rapid collapse has further damaged the credibility of those who claimed to have achieved it. Perhaps the US and UN should look for better negotiators at this point, or at least some who understand the “barbaric” nature of Hamas and its mission.

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Tags: Ban Ki-moon, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, John Kerry, josh earnest, Qatar

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Istheworldgivinguponatwo-state

Is the world giving up on a two-state solution?

posted at 1:21 pm on July 30, 2014 by Noah Rothman

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CNN’s foreign affairs guru, Fareed Zakaria, is melancholic.

The violence in Gaza, he is convinced, will not abate so long as the people of the Gaza Strip have no hope. He is convinced that Gaza residents will forever despair in their prospects not because of the lack of civil society, basic public services, or cultural brutality that has characterized life in the Strip since the terror group Hamas was elected to serve as the governing authority. No. For Zakaria, Gaza residents lack for hope because theirs is not a formally recognized state.

He expressed his despondency in a recent interview with CNN’s New Day:

In the long term I would say the problem is this – what is his strategy? At the end of the day, you have the occupation for 47 years. In 2008, Ehud Olmert had a similar war against Gaza. I was more sympathetic then, because Olmert was engaged in a serious negotiation with the Palestinians to try to create a two-state solution. Benjamin Netanyahu has done essentially no negotiating with the Palestinians on that front. So it’s fair to say you are right in the short term, but what is the long-term strategy? Are you going to be back here a year from now, five years from now?

On Tuesday, Zakaria echoed his lament over the lack of any serious push for a two-state solution amid a war. He noted that anti-Hamas forces have been trying to neutralize that group by military means for 20 years with no success. It seems absurd to suggest that a strategy that has failed for 20 years should be replaced with a strategy that has failed for 60 years, and an increasing number of serious international actors are coming to that same conclusion.

According to British Prime Minster David Cameron, the “facts on the ground” are “beginning to make a two-state solution impossible.”

This statement comes months after Secretary of State John Kerry sounded a note of skepticism about the increasingly unviability of a two-state solution. “I think we have some period of time—in one to one-and-a-half to two years—or it’s over,” the secretary said at a House hearing months before the latest conflict.

What has been become clear in recent weeks, even for those only marginally familiar with the geopolitical landscape in the Levant, is that a two-state solution is no longer viable because the world is essentially dealing with three distinct political entities in this region. In spite of a recently concluded power-sharing deal between Hamas and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, Gaza and the West Bank are no longer one state divided but two states with divergent political cultures and contradictory governments.

This conclusion has been on display since the start of this conflict and has become inescapable in recent days.

On Tuesday, Nabil Shaath, a former Palestinian Authority foreign minister, was blindsided live on CNN with the news Hamas had just rejected a ceasefire proposal put forward by authorities in the West Bank. His shock and confusion was visibly apparent.

The divergence in preferred tactics between PA officials and Hamas was on display yet again on Wednesday when Palestinian Parliament Member and former presidential candidate, Mustafa Barghouti, essentially condemned Hamas’s terms of engagement.

In spite of his effort to devote all of his censure to Israeli behavior, Barghouti’s admission that Hamas and/or Islamic Jihad storing weapons of war in schools represent a “violation” of international law is significant. This is the kind of rhetoric that one does not hear coming out of Gaza.

Though they remain one people with a unified culture, the West Bank and Gaza are divided today by both geography and politics. More tenuous circumstances than those have catalyzed the founding of independent and sovereign states in the past.

The two-state solution may not be entirely dead, but it does seem to have outlived its usefulness.

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Tags: David Cameron, Hamas, Israel, John Kerry, Palestine

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