1) Gas Pains
The New York Times reports on the Egyptian failure to continue supplying gas to Israel, Dispute Grows as Egyptian Gas Is Still Not Flowing to Israel.
Despite the passive voice in the headline the reporting seems pretty solid.
More than a month after saboteurs blew up an Egyptian pipeline supplying natural gas to Israel, the line is repaired but gas is not flowing and foreign shareholders of the company suspect politics to be the reason. They are threatening legal action against Egypt.I had not realized that the aid promises of President Obama had conditions attached.
American and Thai shareholders in the pipeline have demanded urgent consultations to avoid resorting to binding arbitration based on trade treaties. One letter to Egyptian ministries from an American company with an Israeli chairman threatens a lawsuit of $8 billion.
The gas deal has been an integral part of the two countries’ relations and has been supported by Washington. President Obama recently offered Egypt $1 billion in loan guarantees and $1 billion in debt relief on the condition that it meets its commitments. The United States has told Egypt that its security obligations in the northern Sinai are among its commitments, an American official said.This is disturbing, though it's unclear if this man is still a judge or if he is in any related to the legal aspects of the case.
A former deputy chief of Egypt’s court of appeals, Judge Mahmoud al-Khodheiri, recently expressed a common sentiment about the gas deal in an interview with Al Jazeera. “I consider the export of gas to Israel an act of treason, and we should stop it,” he said. “I salute the people who bombed the gas pipe because this is my blood that is being transferred to the enemy.”The reporter, Ethan Bronner also includes this important detail, to show that the idea that Israel is getting a below market deal is false.
There is no international benchmark price of natural gas because its price depends largely on how the gas is transported and how far it travels. So while Germany pays $7 per million B.T.U.’s to Russia and Israel $3 to $4 per million B.T.U.’s to Egypt, Germany also pays $4 to $5 per unit in transport costs and fees along the way whereas Israel only pays $1. The net profit to Egypt from Israel’s payments is the same or better than that to Russia from Germany, he said.
2) Syrian opposition
Tony Badran has had some fascinating tweets about Syria recently, including this
For instnce, Assad's current decree covers those sentenced under decree 59 of 2008, which dealt with, uh, building violations.and this:
Asad's decree excluded those convicted of belonging to “an organization that aims to change the social and economic status of the state.”And one of Assad's former guests has turned on him too, according to Badran:
In addition, Al Jazeera hit Assad in a sensitive spot, turning his so-called “resistance” credentials against him, when former Arab Member of the Knesset Azmi Bishara – who until recently was feted in Damascus as a symbol of Arab resistance – criticized the regime, including Assad’s inheritance of power from his father, on the air and ridiculed its narrative depicting the uprising as a foreign conspiracy. As far as Assad is concerned, that Bishara, who resides in Doha, was allowed to use the Al Jazeera platform meant this was official Qatari policy.
4) It's a legal matter
Last week, Alan Baker and a group of lawyers sent a letter to Secretary General Bin Ki Moon of the UN.
An international group of some 60 attorneys, including former Foreign Ministry legal adviser Alan Baker, has appealed to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to prevent a General Assembly resolution on unilateral Palestinian statehood, based on the pre-1967 lines.In a letter dated Wednesday, the attorneys noted that such a resolution would be a violation of all past agreements between Israel and the Palestinians. They added that it would also contravene UN resolutions 242 and 338.
The letter contains 9 points, including this one:
6. The Palestinians entered into the various agreements constituting what is known as the "Oslo Accords" in the full knowledge that Israel's settlements existed in the areas, and that settlements would be one of the issues to be negotiated in the permanent status negotiations. Furthermore, the Oslo Accords impose no limitation on Israel's settlement activity in those areas that the Palestinians agreed would continue to be under Israel's jurisdiction and control pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.I did a search on Alan Baker and Palestinians in Google. Other than the Jerusalem Post, not a single newspaper seems to have picked up on this story. Given that any legal challenge to Israel seems to make the news, it's odd that no major newspaper could be bothered with Baker's initiative.
5) Pew 1
Recently Pew released a survey of Twitter and Facebook and found that in the wake of PM Netanyahu's visit to the United States, users of bothoverwhelmingly supported Israel.
Pesach Benson remarks:
I’m forever getting emails grousing at how the Israeli government was not/is not/will never be P.R. savvy. I often share that frustration. Today, I’m comforted that Israel’s message resonated in the majority of 478,000 blog posts, tweets and status updates.But more than that, I’ve long-felt that it’s up to Israel’s supporters to empower themselves: to become more knowledgable about the Mideast conflict. It’s about speaking up for Israel at school, at work, online, diving in and getting involved.I do wonder how Pew broke down pro-Israel. Would J-Street, for example, have been included on the pro-Israel side? Based on the criteria mentioned I suspect not. To some degree, this shows a failure of the MSM. People who realize their views are being ignored are more likely to look for and use a platform for broadcasting them.
If you want to see how out of touch the media is look at Peace without Partners at a blog hosted at the New York Times. As in the case of the Baker letter, it doesn't appear that any major American news organization mentioned this Pew study.
The tweet mentioned at the end of Pesach Benson's post reminded me of (actress) Patricia Heaton's tweet.
6) Pew 2
How's that Muslim outreach working? Has consulting with Friedman and Zakaria yielded any benefits?
Barry Rubin reads a recent Pew poll and answers, "no."
Technorati Tag: Middle East.
1 comment:
The reason there isn't peace isn't due to Israeli personalities or policies.
Its due to the Arab refusal to accept Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people.
All the clever word plays Friedman conjures up in the future won't change that basic dynamic in the Middle East in the foreseeable future.
Absent a change in the Arab position, a peace conference like that offered by France at the end of July will go nowhere. There is no compelling reason for Israel to seek a change in the status quo in what is increasingly a dangerous strategic environment.
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