Seven years after the onset of the upheaval in the Middle East and two years since the implementation of the nuclear deal between the world powers and Iran, the main contours of the region’s emerging reality – including the actors, rivalries, partnerships, front lines, power relations, and behavior of the major powers – are becoming clear. Now, after nearly one full year at the Washington helm, the nature of the Trump administration and its influence on the domestic arena, the Middle East, and the global stage are also coming into...
As 2017 draws to a close, the Middle East is witnessing the convergence of several important developments that will potentially have a broad impact on Israeli national security. The civil war in Syria is subsiding through a process dominated by Russia, Iran, and Turkey – which poses the danger that Israel’s interests will not be taken into account in the deliberations and steps toward an agreement to stabilize the arena. The jihadist territorial Islamic State established in Iraq and Syria has been obliterated, although the underlying...
More than seven years after the Gaza flotilla incident, it appears that the legal handling of the matter by the ICC has come to an end. On November 30, 2017, Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda submitted her final decision, confirming her decision of 2014 not to open an investigation against Israel with respect to the “flotilla incident.” Together with this success, Israel faces a greater challenge from the Court – dealing with the preliminary examination taking place about the situation in “Palestine.” This includes an assessment of war...
The fourth issue of Over the Net focuses on trends in two different (though not unconnected) arenas that have been at the center of the debate in the Arab world the past few months. The first trend deals with the internal Palestinian reconciliation deal between Hamas and Fatah, signed in October 2017, after a careful, calculated process by the new Hamas leadership led by Yahya Sinwar. Few give this reconciliation any substantive chance of success, but meanwhile all parties gain from it – particularly Hamas. In this context, the...
The historic announcement on December 6, 2017 that the United States recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel evoked both expressions of support and waves of protest. However, it seemed that many did not understand the full significance of what President Trump described as the “recognition of reality,” as he stated explicitly that the American position on the boundaries of Israeli sovereignty had not changed, and said indirectly that American recognition of Jerusalem’s status as Israel’s “capital”...
Israel’s proven ability to locate and destroy tunnels undermines the rationale of the enemy system (including both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad) whereby attack tunnels are a strategic and psychological tool par excellence. Despite the pressure to respond to Israel’s destruction of the Gaza tunnel because of the many casualties, it seems that Hamas does not want escalation at a time that it is focused on implementing the reconciliation agreement with Fatah. As a military escalation with Israel would hurt Hamas, the organization...
The severe economic crisis and deplorable conditions in the Gaza Strip, which worsened over the past year with the significant reduction in the supply of electricity, have spurred Hamas’s leadership to turn to several regional states for help, particularly Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey. Hamas’s reliance on diplomatic contact with these states coincides with a lengthy period of military restraint, whereby the organization does not fire at Israel and imposes a state of security calm on the organizations that heed its authority. It seems...
On October 12, 2017, Fatah and Hamas signed a new reconciliation agreement in Cairo, which confirms the implementation of the previous reconciliation agreement, formulated in 2011. The provisions regarding the transfer of civil government in the Gaza Strip to the government in Ramallah, and the lifting of the Ramallah sanctions against Gaza, are concrete and accompanied by a timetable. The other issues that were not resolved formerly and resulted in the collapse of the prior reconciliation agreements – including the fate of the...
In December 2013, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas stated that he does not support a boycott of Israel.1 Two years later, in a speech before the Greek parliament in Athens, Abbas said that he wants a peace agreement that would connect the Palestinian Authority to Israel rather than a fence separating the two peoples.2 Despite these declarations indicating that the Palestinian Authority did not share the same orientation as the BDS movement, its actual policy matched, at least partially, the boycott strategy against...
Despite the announcement by the Hamas leadership that it was willing to disband the administrative committee for the Gaza Strip, which was founded six months ago as an act of defiance against PA President Mahmoud Abbas, the road to Palestinian reconciliation is still long. Moreover, it is quite likely that Hamas has maneuvered skillfully, and has successfully caught Abbas and the PA in a honey trap, since if the PA-led Palestinian government returns to Gaza, it will assume the heavy responsibility for reconstruction in the Gaza Strip...
The Temple Mount crisis has passed, but the overall balance sheet is far from satisfactory. Given that events of a similar nature will almost certainly occur in the future, and since it is imperative that they be resolved with as little security and political damage to Israel as possible, Israel must review what ensued – not in an effort to single out guilty parties, but rather in an attempt to learn what will help the security-political cabinet respond more effectively in the next crisis.
The tension on the Temple Mount and the crisis between Israel and Jordan following the attack on a security guard at the Israeli embassy in Amman need more than ad hoc solutions that leave the basic situation unresolved and the strategic opportunities untapped. Israel would do well to seize the political and operational initiative before international and regional entities do, and propose, inter alia, an international meeting on steps that can prevent radical entities from violating freedom of worship and freedom of access to the...
