Politics

I mentioned this in my Netanyahu visit post, but it's worth highlighting in more detail: B'Tselem has a new report out which concludes Israeli settlements occupy 42 percent of the total land area in the West Bank.

The actual construction in the settlements occupies just 55,479 dunam of land, roughly 1 percent of the total area of the West Bank. But B'Tselem argues, based on official state documents and maps, that the jurisdiction of the settlements -- including the various "regional councils" in the West Bank -- actually extends over 2.4 million dunam.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in Washington today for a series of meetings at the White House. He'll hold one-on-one talks with US president Barack Obama before a "working lunch" with Obama, vice president Joseph Biden, and several other officials.

Obama's top priority during these talks will almost certainly be pushing for an extension to Israel's temporary West Bank settlement freeze, which is due to expire in September. The end of the freeze would forestall any possibility of direct talks between the Israelis ri the Palestinians.

"There has been a distinct improvement in the White House relationship with Israel since the last meeting" between Obama and Netanyahu on March 23, said Jonathan Spyer, a political scientist at Israel's Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. "Obama will be looking for a payback," perhaps in the form of an extension to the settlement freeze, Spyer said.

But from Netanyahu's perspective, the domestic politics of extending the freeze are... difficult, to say the least. His administration has nothing to show for the current freeze: Israeli-Palestinian "proximity talks" have yielded little concrete progress, save for a rumored land swap proposal offered by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.

(Updated below) Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to quietly mend fences with Turkey: He dispatched Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, his industry minister, on a secret "mediation" trip to Ankara, according to Israel's Channel 2 news.

This was an unintentionally funny exchange from Al-Sharq Al-Awsat's interview with Iraqi vice president Tariq al-Hashemi (عربي):

Q: Which of the coalitions is closest to you in forming the government?

Hashemi: It is a coalition which is committed to the constitution and to the rules of democratic behavior. [...]

Q: So Iraqiyya is not close to any coalition?

The interviewer was clearly just trying to press him on an evasive answer, but given the events of the last three months, the question seems somewhat appropriate. Hashemi goes on to say that Iraqiyya will not take part in the goverment if it's excluded -- a fairly serious threat I can't recall Iraqiyya having made before.

Of course, whether or not they follow through is another story: We've heard a lot of rhetoric since March 7, and most of it is just political posturing.

In any event, should make for a fun time this afternoon when Nouri al-Maliki and Iyad Allawi hold their second post-election meeting.

Dozens of people were beaten and arrested yesterday by Egyptian riot police during an anti-police brutality demonstration in downtown Cairo (who said irony was dead?).

The protest was one of many following the murder of Khaled Said, the Egyptian man allegedly beaten to death by police after shooting a video of police officers involved in a drug deal.

The Israeli security cabinet met earlier today and announced (some of) the details of its plan to ease the Gaza blockade.

Today's announcement from the cabinet was more detailed than last week's, which merely declared Israel's intent to loosen the blockade. But it still doesn't say exactly which goods will be barred from Gaza; whether businesses in Gaza will be allowed to resume exports; or whether the looser blockade will include looser rules on the movement of people.

It's a small step, but nonetheless it's objectively a good thing. After the jump: A statement from the White House, issued a few minutes after the Israeli decision.

It didn't get a great deal of attention in the English-language media, but Lebanon's parliament held an important debate earlier this week on granting basic rights to Palestinian refugees.

This has long been a controversial issue in Lebanon, where some 400,000 Palestinians are currently denied the freedom to work (except in low-level positions, though few Palestinians qualified for the requisite work permits), own property and travel overseas, and have little access to basic social services from the government.

A new set of draft laws (credit where's it due: Walid Jumblatt is one of the co-sponsors) would extend some of those basic rights to Palestinian refugees.

Israel's decision to slightly ease the Gaza blockade drew a very caveated reaction from around the world. Britain's foreign office said "further work is needed"; Catherine Ashton, the European Union foreign policy chief, urged Israel to allow "many, many more goods... in to Gaza."

Shadi Hamid flagged a new WINEP paper summarizing some of the rampant electoral fraud during Egypt's deeply flawed Shura Council elections earlier this month. The outcome was not terribly surprising -- the National Democratic Party always wins an overwhelming (95 percent) share of the seats -- but the widespread fraud is a bad portent for parliamentary elections this autumn.

It seems crass to talk about "winners" and "losers" after Israel's deadly attack on the flotilla of ships bound for Gaza last month. Nine people were killed, after all; dozens of others were wounded.

Still: It's worth stepping back and thinking about how the flotilla incident has reshaped the politics of the region. My initial take -- bearing in mind that it's too early to predict long-term consequences -- is that the Israeli attack has mostly accelerated existing political trends, rather than creating new ones.

It has accelerated Israel's isolation from several of its neighbors and allies; it has sharpened divisions within Turkish domestic politics; it has deepened perceptions that the Obama administration as too close to Israel. And it seems to have had a remarkably minor impact on Palestinian domestic politics.

Continuing the theme of Iraqi politics as depressing theater, the parliament convened today for its first meeting since the election.

The session lasted eighteen minutes, long enough for an opening prayer, the oath of office (taken in either Arabic or Kurdish), and an apologetic statement from MP Fouad Masoum, the chair of the session, who told Iraq that legislators need time "for further deliberations" on the next government.

And that was it! They adjourned without setting a date for another meeting, let alone selecting a president or parliamentary speaker.

In case you're wondering, prime minister Nouri al-Maliki sat next to Ammar al-Hakim, the head of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (and Maliki's likely coalition partner). Iyad Allawi sat a few seats down. Maliki and Allawi walked out next to each other, but didn't appear to speak at all.

By now you've probably heard about Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) endorsing the Gaza blockade at a meeting of the Orthodox Union. Schumer praised the collective punishment of 1.5 million people in Gaza, telling the crowd (to strong applause) that "strangl[ing] them economically" would reduce support for Hamas.

Iraqiyya TV (no relation to the Iraqiyya list!) ran a "breaking news" headline on Thursday night announcing an official merger between Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law coalition and the Iraqi National Alliance Shi'ite bloc.

Not too exciting, right? The State of Law-INA merger was unofficially announced more than a month ago, and the new governing coalition still hasn't picked a prime minister. They did pick a name (عربي), the National Alliance, but otherwise there's nothing new in this announcement.

My personal take on the new package of Iran sanctions approved this week is that they won't accomplish anything -- anything good, at least.

The Iranian regime has already warned that the sanctions will preclude further negotiations over its nuclear program. Officials have also warned that the sanctions might scrap last month's so-called "Tehran declaration," the tripartite deal negotiated by Turkey and Brazil. (That might be a bluff -- it would sour relations with both countries, and Iran does need at least a few allies.)

The predicted Security Council vote on new sanctions against Iran came Tuesday, with predictable results: Slight additions to previous sanctions, opposition from Brazil and Turkey and an abstention from Lebanon, and an outburst from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Some commentators, including the Leveretts, lack faith that this fourth round of sanctions will have any serious effect on Iran's behavior, but the White House, armed with a list of 14 "new" measures imposed by Tuesday's resolution, argues otherwise.

The United Nations Security Council says it could vote on a new package of Iran sanctions this week.

Claude Heller, Mexico's ambassador to the UN (and the current Security Council president), said the vote could come as early as tomorrow. UN envoys are scheduled to meet on Tuesday morning to discuss the latest sanctions package, which bars Iran from "any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons," and prohibits Iran from buying several types of heavy weapons (these types of sanctions have been quite difficult to enforce).

A bit of a rant here, I'm sorry, but this is rapidly becoming a pet peeve: Dozens of news outlets -- the Associated Press, the Jerusalem Post, the Wall Street Journal, many others -- have used the phrase "Turkey turning away from the West" over the last few weeks. This trend actually started because of Turkey's role in negotiating the tripartite nuclear fuel swap deal, but it has accelerated following Israel's flotilla attack last week.

The Washington Post is the latest newspaper to trot out this dire conclusion, in a page-one story this morning written by Mary Beth Sheridan. Missing from the article, though, is a clear definition of what it means for Turkey to "turn east."

Because clearly the best response to an immoral blockade is racism:

An Egyptian appeals court on Saturday upheld a ruling that orders the country's Interior Ministry to strip the citizenship from Egyptians married to Israeli women.

There are an estimated 30,000 Egyptians married to Israeli women; their cases will be reviewed individually by the interior ministry. The court directed the ministry to "take into consideration whether a man married an Israeli Arab or a Jew."

On a side note, why is stripping citizenship suddenly in vogue? There's this ruling, the Israeli government's decision to strip Muhammad Abu Tir of his citizenship, and of course Sen. Joe Lieberman's disgraceful proposal to remove US citizenship from suspects accused of terrorism. When did this become popular?

Update: As Chris Albon pointed out to me, article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states (emphasis mine): "No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality." (I guess Mubarak's government would claim that stripping citizenship based on who you marry is not "arbitrary"?)

Philip Alston's report on targeted killings, delivered to the United Nations' Human Rights Council this week, has received a lot of attention for being the first big takedown of the United States' clandestine drone program.

Alston makes a measured and reasoned legal attack on the general use of targeted killings by governments against non-state actors, but he specifically criticizes the American drone campaign in the Middle East, expressing doubt that the U.S. can claim to be in an armed conflict with Al-Qaeda and concluding that, "[o]utside the context of armed conflict, the use of drones for targeted killing is almost never likely to be legal." 

But Howard Koh, the top Obama administration official to attempt a public legal defense of the use of drones, has invoked America's "armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces" as a justification for taking out individual fighters and leaders. So who's right when everybody's wrong?

I've been doing largely non-stop flotilla coverage at Al-Jazeera for the last three days (including live blogs on Monday and Tuesday), so you'll forgive me for not writing too much about the subject tonight; I need a break. (Issandr El Amrani has a good roundup of flotilla commentary, if you're looking for broad analysis.)

But I do want to quickly comment on the American reaction -- or, rather, the lack thereof -- to the flotilla attack. During the White House press briefing yesterday, press secretary Robert Gibbs was asked (repeatedly) about Obama's refusal to condemn Israel's actions -- something dozens of other world leaders had already done.