The secret ties date to Sudan’s pre-independence days, when Israel developed relations with the Umma (Nation) Party, which feared the expansionist ambitions of Egypt’s King Farouk. The abolition of the monarchy in Egypt led to Sudan’s independence in 1956, but Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser’s pan-Arab policy, especially his nationalization of the Suez Canal Company, prompted renewed fears of neighboring Egypt. This was the backdrop for the 1957 meeting between prime minister Abdallah Khalil of the Umma Party, foreign minister Golda Meir and senior Mossad officials.

The 1958 military coup transformed Sudan, bringing it closer to Egypt and severing the link with Israel. Against this backdrop, especially after Israel’s 1967 victory over Egypt, the rebels in the South sought military aid. They correctly identified a shared interest with Israel, which was also interested in weakening Khartoum and getting access to the Nile, Egypt’s main artery of life.

From 1969 to 1972, the Mossad helped the Anya-Nya rebels against the regime in Khartoum. The Mossad’s Efraim Halevy and David Ben Uziel (nicknamed “Tarzan”) were key figures in this affair. The southern rebellion and Israel’s aid ended with the signing of the 1972 agreement providing the South with certain autonomous rights. The rebellion was renewed in 1983, and Israel was once again involved in various ways.

In 1969, the Khartoum regime was seized by Ja’far al-Numeiri, who initially leaned on Soviet and Libyan support, but turned to the West in 1972 in a bid to improve his economy. Numeiri was one of only a few Arab leaders who supported Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s peace initiative. Already in 1975 he was quoted as saying, “Israel’s existence is a concrete reality that we recognize.”

On a Kenyan ranch in 1982, he met secretly with defense minister Ariel Sharon. Sharon proposed an outlandish plan to turn Sudan into a regional arsenal, within the framework of a new Middle East order that would entail the possible overthrow of Iran’s ayatollahs.

Numeiri played an important role in Israel’s operation to bring Ethiopian Jews (Beta Israel) to Israel, agreeing to Israel’s use of Sudan for its airlift as long as the affair remained secret. During 1984 and 1985, Israel flew several thousand Ethiopian Jews through Sudan in return for aid that Numeiri received from the US. However, an Israeli leak of the operation cut it short.

Israel and Sudan have thus been conducting clandestine relations for years. To a large extent, Sudan served as Israel’s hidden periphery.

Under the rule of Omar al-Bashir (1989-2019), Sudan became a bitter enemy of Israel, backing al-Qaeda terrorism and cooperating with Iran. In 1998, it granted sanctuary to the perpetrators of the US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 200 people and wounded thousands.

THE ISRAEL Air Force and Navy, according to foreign reports, bombed Iranian facilities and weapons warehouses in Sudan, as well as arms convoys from Sudan to Gaza, and damaged Iranian ships docked at Port Sudan.

Bashir also cracked down cruelly on his own people and was responsible for the genocide in Darfur, in which almost a half-million African Muslims were slaughtered and three million were displaced. In 1993, the US placed Sudan on its list of states supporting terrorism, and the International Criminal Court accused Bashir in 2008 of war crimes.

The shift in Sudan’s stand toward the West, the US and Israel started in the waning days of Bashir’s regime. In fact, after he realized the colossal damage he had caused his country’s economy, Bashir severed diplomatic ties with Iran and at the same time hooked up with Saudi Arabia, sending forces to fight the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen.

The change was also reflected in Sudan’s attitude toward Israel. An Israeli Foreign Ministry envoy met in 2017 with senior Sudanese officials. In 2019, Mossad chief Yossi Cohen met with the head of Sudanese intelligence on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. The Americans responded positively to Bashir’s measures and suspended some of the economic sanctions on Sudan.

Public protests led to Bashir’s removal from power in 2019. The change toward Israel was expressed in a February 2020 meeting in Uganda between the head of Sudan’s Sovereignty Council, Gen. Burhan, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The issue of ties with Israel is a point of contention in Sudanese politics, but economic interests eventually tipped the scales. Sudan’s main interest lay in its removal from the list of state sponsors of terrorism – a move that would open the way to Western investments, loans and grants. To that end, Sudan accepted the US demand for reparations to the American victims of the terrorist attacks.

Sudan can benefit from cooperation with Israel in many fields, such as healthcare, agriculture, industry, desalination, trade and more. Israel could also vouch for Sudan’s requests to the US Congress. Presumably, a reasonable accommodation will also be found regarding Sudanese asylum seekers in Israel.

Unlike the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, Sudan is not a prosperous market for Israeli exports, and its citizens lack any significant purchasing power. Per capita GDP is low, even lower than Egypt’s. Nonetheless, Israel will benefit by overflying Sudanese territory, thus shortening its commercial flights, and will also enjoy access to Port Sudan on the Red Sea.

What is more, establishment of relations with Sudan will boost Israel’s standing in Africa. Just as important, many Israelis remember Khartoum as host of the 1967 Arab League summit that adopted the “Three No’s” on Israel: no to peace, no to recognition and no to negotiations. Now, another brick has dropped from the wall of Arab rejectionism, and at a particularly symbolic site.

**The article was published on Jpost, 28 October 2020

הפוסט Sudan’s economic interests tipped scales הופיע לראשונה ב-Mitvim.

Certainly, peaceful relations between Sudan and Israel are in the long-term interests of both parties, as indeed of the US and other regional and global stakeholders.

For Israel, those interests are foremost security and geo-strategic ones. Owing to its location in the Horn of Africa and Red Sea region, Sudan has been of considerable concern to Israel from the outset. Over the decades, Israel forged covert ties with a range of Sudanese power players for a variety of purposes – from destabilizing Nasser’s regime in Egypt to training militias for the overthrow of the Khomeini regime in Iran to assisting in the evacuation of Ethiopian (Beta Israel) Jews stranded in Sudanese refugee camps. When, between 1985 and 2015, Khartoum allied itself with Tehran and began serving as a conduit for smuggled Iranian munitions to Palestinian militants, especially in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, Israel staged numerous air strikes inside Sudan against suspected weapons convoys and at least one arms factory.

Since Sudan has cut its ties with Tehran in 2016 and, even more promisingly, replaced the regime of longtime strongman Omar al-Bashir with a Western-oriented transitional government in 2018, it has ceased posing a threat to Israel and once again begun offering strategic opportunities. In the context of peace, close cooperation with Sudan could extend Israel’s Red Sea maritime corridor further south and facilitate any number of military and intelligence operations.

And while normalization with Sudan is not expected to have the same dramatic impact for Israel that the recently signed Abraham Accords did, its psychological importance should not be underestimated. The site of the Arab League summit that issued the “three nos” resolution – no peace, no recognition, no negotiation – immediately following the 1967 War, “Khartoum” has been shorthand for Arab rejectionism of Israel for over 50 years. Indeed, far from signifying an obstacle, Sudan would now open a “passage to Africa,” providing Israelis friendly territorial contiguity across the African continent. For the first time ever, Israelis would have the possibility, at least in theory, to drive their car from their home all the way to the Cape of Good Hope. For a nation shaped by the mentality of an island in hostile seas, this is, literally, a breakthrough.

For Sudan, normalization with Israel promises significant material rewards. On the bilateral level, Israeli trade and technology transfer could be of huge value to the country’s agriculture sector, which employs about 80 percent of the work force and contributes around 30 percent to its annual GDP.

Yet the benefits on the multilateral level will be the real prize. The US has already announced its decision to lift Sudan from the US list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, which is widely understood to have been a key condition for Sudan’s agreement to normalize relations with Israel. Additional benefits include a generous package of incentives worth hundreds of millions of dollars in financial aid and investment the US has prepared, together with the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

On the face of it, the choice to normalize relations with Israel should be obvious. Yet 18 months after the ousting of the autocratic regime that had ruled Sudan for over thirty years, Sudan is going through a fragile process of democratization. Its current government, a cohabitation arrangement between military and civilian stakeholders, is fractured, and a decision as publicly contentious as recognizing Israel could strengthen the very elements who pose the greatest impediment to a smooth transition to democratic rule – primarily, the military and the Islamists.

The military has been taking the lead in establishing contacts with Israel. It was General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, chairman of Sudan’s Sovereign Council, a military-led body overseeing the civilian-led government, who met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Entebbe last February. In assuming responsibility for contacts with Israel, the military seeks to cast itself, both domestically and internationally, as the overriding authority for the country’s national security interests, at the expense of the civilian leadership. In so doing, it also wants to take the credit for the financial package that Sudan stands to receive for normalizing relations with Israel.

That one of the chief advocates for normalization has been al-Burhan’s deputy, Mohammad Hamdan Dagalo, underscores another facet that should be of concern to both the US and Israel. Dagalo is head of the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces, which shot and and killed over 100 pro-democracy protesters last year. A decade and a half ago, he commanded the notorious Janjaweed (“Devil on Horseback”) militias, the main perpetrators of the genocide in Darfur. If normalization with Israel carries the cost of strengthening players like him, it behooves us to ask whether it is worth the benefits, not least for Sudan, but also for Israel.

On the other end of the Sudanese political divide are Islamist groups, who, too, stand to gain from a decision to recognize Israel. Once a rising political force in Sudan and – under the charismatic leadership Hassan al-Turabi – a key player in Al-Bashir’s government during the 1990s, the Islamists have seen their power decline over the past twenty years. Since the 2018 uprising, they have been waiting on the sidelines as the military and the secular liberals have been jockeying for power. Embracing Israel, a move bound to be widely unpopular given decades of official anti-Israeli hostility, could create an opportunity for the Islamists to mobilize public support, and they have already issued a fatwa against normalization of ties with Israel.

This is what is at stake for Sudan, and why the civilian leadership, led by Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdok, appears to have been reluctant to accept the American offer, preferring to postpone a decision on Israel until after the first universal elections in the country, scheduled for 2022.

If the US cares for the long-term prospects of Israeli-Sudanese relations, it should refrain from bullying Khartoum into embracing Jerusalem at the present time and opt instead to encourage a gradual, step-by-step approach. For rather than heralding a thriving relationship between the two sides, the aggressive manner in which the Trump administration is forcing Sudan’s hand risks undermining the country’s delicate process to democratic rule, strengthening its military over the civilian stakeholders, enhancing the appeal of Islamist groups, and, ultimately, dooming any relationship between Israel and Sudan to a precipitous end.

The article was published by Haaretz on 20 October 2020

הפוסט Trump is bullying Sudan into embracing Israel. It won’t end well הופיע לראשונה ב-Mitvim.

One of the Palestinian national movement’s greatest achievements under Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) was its November 2012 recognition as a UN General Assembly observer state, a significant step in its quest for international legitimacy and struggle for statehood. That journey began with the 1964 founding of the PLO-led Palestinian Foreign Service as a central strategic goal, to both improve the terrorist organization’s image and mobilize global support for what the PLO regarded as the Palestinian people’s government in exile. One of the PLO’s first steps was to establish ties with the Arab world.

The PLO has declared the establishment of a Palestinian state twice, once by Yasser Arafat in Tunis in November 1988 and again by Palestinian Authority (PA) President and PLO Chair Abbas in November 2013. The Palestinians also developed a worldwide foreign service with representative offices in 95 states, as of 2017. Yet, the PA continues to conduct itself as a non-state body and its PLO-led diplomatic activity has failed to break through the freeze in the peace process with Israel, while its many offices around the world are often only of symbolic value.

After the PA’s establishment, and due to the centralized nature of the Palestinian regime, the PLO’s Foreign Service did not take part in negotiations with Israel, focusing instead on creating a favorable international climate for the Palestinian issue and seeking to advance the Palestinian cause vis-à-vis governments and civil society around the world.

In a strategic shift, Abbas sought to rectify Arafat’s mistakes, turning the Palestinian struggle from an armed campaign into a diplomatic one. Abbas realized that armed struggle was ineffective and that masked weapons-toting Palestinians do not generate sympathy in the West. He also realized that despite European recognition, most states did not conduct full diplomatic relations with the PA and that absent broad European support, the idea of establishing a Palestinian state was not feasible. The diplomatic measures he led raised hope among the PLO leadership of change in the Palestinians’ international standing, but the diplomatic path yielded limited results. Under Abbas’ stewardship, the PA joined Unaffiliated organizations and was recognized as a state by a number of additional European states, but its standing remained essentially unchanged.

Diplomatic ties between the PA and Israel have been frozen since Netanyahu assumed power in 2009. The last significant negotiations took place between Abbas and Olmert during the Annapolis process. The Palestinian issue has since been marginalized, mainly due to Netanyahu’s insistence on preserving the status quo and the regional tumult following the Arab Spring – political instability in Egypt, civil war in Syria and the war against ISIS. Trump’s rise to power, overturning the Obama Administration’s progressive foreign policy, did not augur well for the Palestinians.

Trump’s initial steps signaled support for an iron wall between the US and the Arab world, with a ban on entry visas for residents of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, Yemen and Somalia. Because of his positive declarations on Israeli construction in the West Bank, relocation of the US Embassy to Jerusalem and closure of the PLO office in Washington, the PA no longer viewed the US as an honest broker. The PA sought an alternative axis with Moscow, asking Putin and the Russian Foreign Ministry to assume a bigger role in mediation between the sides. In his most recent UNGA speech in September 2019, Abbas revealed that Russia had made three attempts to revive the peace process, but Israel had rejected them. The PLO-Russia rapprochement has significant historic precedent. In addition to ideological-historic affinity of the socialist and Marxist factions within the PLO, Abbas himself was close to the Russian regime for many years.

With the PA seeking closer ties to Russia, the US sought a new axis with the Gulf States. Lack of stability in the Arab republics along with Iran’s growing power and deepening involvement in the civil wars in Syria and Yemen, prompted the Gulf States, chiefly Saudi Arabia, to tighten relations with the US in a bid to ensure their defense. The fact that Trump, like the Gulf States, opposed the Iran nuclear deal bolstered this trend. Many among the younger generation in the Gulf view the Palestinian issue as a historic obstacle and lip service they must pay for the sake of pan-Arabism. They express willingness to advance ties with Israel, over the heads of the Palestinians, in order to promote their defense interests. Nonetheless, the freeze in the peace process clearly limits their room for maneuver, as well as Israel’s.

In recent years, the Trump Administration has been trying to formulate a peace vision, which it has yet to unveil but is known to center around the concept that advancing economic peace would engender a diplomatic process. The Palestinians, Russia and China boycotted the economic workshop that the US held in Bahrain earlier this year; Israeli officials were absent, too, and the gathering does not seem to have achieved any progress.

The PA’s greatest fear is loss of the historic safety net that the Arab world has provided the Palestinians since 1948. Prior to the 1990s peace process, this safety net helped the Palestinians reject conciliation attempts in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the 1990s, the Palestinians used Arab support to boost the legitimacy of negotiations with Israel. However, the climate of normalization between Israel and the Arab world emerging in recent years – not only in clandestine meetings of leaders and brief handshakes at international fora, but also fostered by leading bloggers and media personalities on social media, confronts the Palestinians with a diplomatic nightmare.

Clerics from Bahrain and bloggers from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States have already visited Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. If a pro-peace government is installed in Israel, the PA will no longer have to fear a rapprochement between Israel and certain Sunni states, viewing it instead as a confidence building measure toward renewed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations as part of a multi-channel regional process.

Dr. Ido Zelkovitz is a Policy Fellow at the Mitvim Institute and Head of Middle East Studies at the Yezreel Valley College. He is an expert of Palestinian society and politics.

(originally published in the Jerusalem Post)

הפוסט The Palestinian Foreign Service at a Time of Diplomatic Freeze הופיע לראשונה ב-Mitvim.

In recent years, along with its moves to strengthen ties with Middle Eastern states, Israel has been seeking to expand its links with African states. For example, at a November 2018 meeting with Chad’s President, Netanyahu declared that “Israel is returning to Africa” and hinted at intentions to restore ties with Sudan. The very thought that Netanyahu considered meeting with a man like Omar al-Bashir, who has since been deposed and will soon stand trial for crimes against humanity, generates aversion and concern.

Improved relations between Israel and its neighbors in the Middle East and Africa are undoubtedly a positive development, but does every end justify the means and is every regional leader a worthy Israeli ally? This question has been dogging Israeli foreign policy for decades, but has been underscored in recent years given the changes in Israel’s regional relations and their more public dimension.

What is Israel’s policy regarding the warming relations or rapprochement with countries in the region? Do the government and the Knesset conduct significant debate about the emerging ties between Israel and North African and Middle Eastern states?

Let us start with the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, which is tasked with overseeing the government’s defense and foreign affairs activity. In practice, the Knesset’s most prestigious committee has turned into a unidirectional communications channel for senior defense and foreign affairs officials to the legislature, with those testifying before the panel generally failing to answer lawmakers’ questions or providing only partial answers.

In addition, foreign policy issues are relegated to the sidelines of the committee’s agenda with its perpetual focus on defense issues that always appear more important and pressing. The idea of splitting the panel into two separate committees has come up occasionally, but has been discounted.

The State Security Cabinet also appears to be sidelined often and excluded from the decision making loop. For most of the past four years, the Prime Minister has also served as Foreign Minister. His confidante, attorney Yitzhak Molcho often served as his special envoy to Arab states, but was not required to report to the Knesset or the professional levels of government since he was essentially a private individual. The Prime Minister’s power and authority in defense and foreign policy appeared unlimited.

Israel is proud (justifiably so) of being the only democracy in the Middle East. Human rights values are the pillars of Israel’s existence as a democratic state, and must be one of the most important and weighty considerations in formulating policy. What, then, is their weight in determining Israeli foreign policy?

There is no absolute morality in the conduct of foreign policy. Not only that, there is usually an inherent contradiction between morality and the practice of foreign policy since democratic states must maintain contact with non-democratic ones. They must also deal with the fact that such states will use all means at their disposal to promote their interests.

These days, many fans of “realpolitik” in Israel and the world believe that when a state seeks to promote its foreign policy, it should not be fettered by ethical considerations. Prime Minister Netanyahu undoubtedly subscribes to this school of thought. He forges close ties with authoritarian heads of state, sometimes even appearing to prefer them to his colleagues in democratic states. Just as he is not deterred by close links with such leaders, he is not put off by weapons deals with states such as Burma, where authorities are conducting a genocide, according to UN reports.

The murder of exiled Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi provided one of the most obvious examples of Netanyahu’s belief in “realpolitik”. Although US intelligence flatly accused Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman of ordering the hit, President Trump did not sever ties with Riyadh and urged waiting for the findings of the Saudi investigation. Netanyahu convinced Trump to ease US pressure on Riyadh, arguing that the Saudis are an important strategic regional ally.

Much before Netanyahu, Israel conducted relations with “problematic” states, such as South Africa in the apartheid era. Up until the 1970s, Israel had condemned South Africa for the segregation of its black citizens, voted in favor of international sanctions and recalled its ambassador from Cape Town. In those days, Ben-Gurion rejected out of hand any possibility of closer ties with the South African government and adhered to the criticism of its apartheid regime. Following the Yom Kippur War, when many African states severed diplomatic relations with Israel, Israel’s approach changed. Israel felt weak and isolated, shunned by the family of nations, and decided to tighten relations with pariah states such as South Africa.

Israel’s current situation is completely different. Everyone understands that Israel needs good relations with its neighbors in order to ensure its security and sovereignty. That is why policy makers should draw red lines clearly defining what Israel is allowed to do and what it must not do.

Israel must not remain silent in the face of genocide and ethnic cleansing. This constitutes a severe violation of its identity and nature as a Jewish and democratic state. Rigorous judgment must be applied to consideration of arms deals. Clearly, certain states buy weapons not only to defend themselves, but also to kill, and that is why policy makers in the ministries of defense and foreign affairs and in the prime minister’s office must always consider not only financial interests, but also ethical ones. In particularly egregious and troubling cases, when journalists and human right activists are subjected to torture and sent to rot in jail, Israel can use its power and influence to urge the US administration to raise human rights and democracy issues in the region rather than blindly supporting the repressive violence of regimes in the Middle East. The Foreign Ministry has clearly defined red lines to which Israel generally adheres in its relations with radical right European parties. It should formulate similar guidelines regarding Israel’s emerging ties with Middle Eastern and African states, ascribing importance and value to democratic and moral components.

In the legislature, Knesset members must breathe new life into the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and insist on the centrality of Israel’s regional ties for the panel’s agenda. They must demand explanations from senior officials appearing before them and insist on getting answers. The Knesset must also anchor in legislation the Prime Minister’s authority in foreign affairs and defense issues and determine standards to which policy makers must adhere.

Israel is not simply another state in the Middle East. It is the only truly functioning democracy in the region. As a democratic state, Israel cannot shirk the human rights issue. There may not be absolute morality in foreign policy, but conducting a foreign policy devoid of all morality is not an option, either.

Ksenia Svetlova is a Policy Fellow at the Mitvim Institute and a former Member of Knesset.

(originally published in the Jerusalem Post)

הפוסט The Democracy Component in Israel’s Relations with Arab State הופיע לראשונה ב-Mitvim.

Not so long ago in 2016, the centennial “festivities” commemorating the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 were accompanied by the assessment that the days of many Arab states are numbered and that the events of the Arab Spring and their outcomes – including the declaration of the caliphate of ISIS – represent a belated correction to the artificial borders of the Arab states, which had been drawn by the hands of Western colonialism in the wake of WWI. But here we are, two years later, and there has been no change to the borders of any Arab state. Several factors explain why the borders have not moved.

First, is the existence of a strong and stable national identity. In Egypt and Tunisia, territorial identity predated independence. As a result, territorial integrity withstood the threats posed by the recent shocks to these countries’ ruling powers. In more “artificial” states, the ruling establishment constructed a particular local identity through various socialization processes including national holidays, school textbooks, art and literature. The success of these efforts is difficult to quantify, but the existence of an Iraqi identity cannot be denied if, after 15 years of US occupation, ISIS-backed terrorism and a civil war, Iraq is on its way to recovery and is even conducting democratic elections.

Second, the “deep” state institutions have successfully coped with the local revolutions. In Egypt, the army and the legal system brought the system back to its pre-revolution condition. And in Tunisia, civil society forces managed to complete a democratic revolution, and were even awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts.

Third, the involvement of external actors also contributed to the preservation of territorial integrity. Global and regional powers – Turkey, Iran, and Israel – have an interest in maintaining the status quo. Any violation of that could lead to instability and, ultimately, to war, rising oil prices, disruption to maritime traffic through the Persian Gulf and the Suez Canal, and to regional turmoil. The best example of such a contribution is, of course, Syria, which was largely saved by the involvement of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. The US, Jordan and Israel also played a secondary role in this process. US involvement in Iraq had a similar stabilizing effect on that country. No less important is the fact that Iran also had an interest in maintaining Iraq’s territorial integrity, but wished to subjugate it to its influence. Moreover, all the global and regional powers (with the exception of Israel) prevented the secession of Iraq’s Kurdish area, due to concerns over irredentist claims by Kurds in neighboring states.

Fourth, several Arab leaders followed a shrewd strategy that prevented any deterioration in the situation. The manifest examples are the region’s monarchs, King Mohammed VI of Morocco and King Abdullah II of Jordan. Both initiated reforms designed to satisfy some popular demands and maintained dialogue with the opposition forces in their respective states. Demonstrations in Morocco and Jordan continue to erupt occasionally but have not yet deteriorated to the point of an actual threat to the monarchy or to the state’s territorial identity. A different situation prevails in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states which used oil revenues to elicit the support of its citizens in exchange for a series of economic benefits and, more recently, governmental reforms. An interesting point is that the Gulf states – in particular UAE, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia – score high on the Fragile States Index (reflecting weak central government, non-provision of public services, widespread corruption, refugees and a sharp economic decline).

Fifth, with the memory of civil war still fresh in their minds, the citizens of several countries, including Algeria, Lebanon, Sudan and the Palestinian territories, elected not to rock their respective governmental boats. As a result, the internal developments in these states are not expected to lead to territorial changes, with the exception of the Palestinians who are struggling to attain a state of their own.

All of which leads to the conclusion that Syria is not an exception in terms of the overall pattern of stable territorial integrity in the region. Even the two remaining states – Yemen and Libya – will not change the overall picture. There is a good chance that Yemen will break up into two entities (North and South) as was the situation before the unification in 1990; and Libya’s General Khalifa Haftar, commander of the Libyan National Army, appears to be geared to assume control over the entire country. Consequently, the main question that should be addressed by scholars of the modern Middle East is not why the territorial Arab states are destined to break up, but rather, what factors underlie their persistence, despite their artificial origin.

Prof. Elie Podeh is a Board Member at the Mitvim Institute. He teaches at the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

(originally published in the Jerusalem Post)

הפוסט A New Mideast in Familiar Clothing הופיע לראשונה ב-Mitvim.