Isratine

The term will be defined shortly…but first…

Since Tulsi Gabbard has left the campaign trail I have been in search of a candidate to support…..Biden ain’t it…….he is the proof of what you get when you settle for what is offered.

I went to a familiar party from my past…the Green Party now that Stein is not on their agenda…..

After reading over their platform and policy support I found something that would scratch them off my list of possibles…..

Here is their stand…..

Our Green values oblige us to support popular movements for peace and demilitarization in Israel-Palestine, especially those that reach across the lines of conflict to engage both Palestinians and Israelis of good will.

We support the implementation of boycott and divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era, which includes pressuring our government to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel; and we support maintaining these nonviolent punitive measures until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by

• Ending its occupation and colonization of all Palestinian lands and dismantling the Wall in the West Bank
• Recognizing the fundamental rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
• Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

We support a U.S. foreign policy that promotes the creation of one secular, democratic state for Palestinians and Israelis on the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan as the national home of both peoples, with Jerusalem as its capital.

https://www.gp.org/platform

One nation…secular and equal……This idea is an idea put forth by Qaddafi……you remember him right?

From 2002…..

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on Tuesday said Israel should be replaced by a democracy called “Isratine” where unarmed Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace.

“If the Jews want peace they should accept to live in peace and drop arms with their Palestinian brethren,” Gaddafi said in a televised interview with al-Jazeera satellite television.

Gaddafi, who has rejected a Saudi Middle East peace bid, said it was “impossible” to create an independent Palestinian state along with Israel because “the Israelis would not accept to live within (the range) of Palestinian guns”.

Gaddafi put forward his own Middle East peace plan at an Arab summit last year. It included demands for dismantling weapons of mass destruction in the region and the return of seven million Palestinian refugees.

“The initiatives that have been imposed on Arabs… resulted in the blood that is being shed,” said Gaddafi, referring to the 18-month-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.

The Saudi initiative, the top issue on the agenda of the upcoming Arab summit, envisages Arab normalisation with the Jewish state in return for full Israeli withdrawal from Arab land occupied during the 1967 Middle East war.

Gaddafi said Israel should also dismantle its mass destruction weapons and withdraw from occupied Syrian land if it wanted peace with non-Palestinian Arabs.

Even the Palestine Authority has sided with the possibility of a one state solution……

Palestinian negotiators are more frequently threatening to abandon the goal of a two-state solution in their conflict with Israel and are pushing for a one-state option instead.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) is very well aware that a one-state solution constitutes a threat to Israel, and has used the threat during half a dozen meetings documented in The Palestine Papers.

The two-state solution remains the conceptual basis for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. However, as it has failed to accomplish a final agreement, Palestinian interest in a one-state solution has seemingly grown.

The one-state solution is generally presented as a nightmare scenario for Israel. The likelihood that Palestinians might one day constitute an electoral majority in a bi-national state – which is seen as inevitable – is viewed by many Israeli Jews as a threat to the ‘Jewish character’ of the country.

https://www.aljazeera.com/palestinepapers/2011/01/201112612953672648.html

I am against the idea as well…..time for their to be two states in this regions…..Palestine being defined by the treaty of 1967…a treaty that Israel has seldom upheld their agreement to the provisions

I gave my thoughts with this post…..

https://gulfsouthfreepress.wordpress.com/2020/02/15/define-palestine/

The plan to annex West Bank territory is against international law and now that have Trump in their pocket they will violate the law as they, Israel, did in 1947…..

Some further thoughts on this proposal ofm One state solution…….

This new phase may play out over a generation. But it is already clear that the central dividing line will be the fight against apartheid and the demand for equal rights for Palestinians within a binational state.

In such a scenario Israelis will face an almost impossible choice from their perspective: either enforcing apartheid through military rule to safeguard Israel’s Jewish characteristics or promote democracy through the extension of full rights to all Palestinians, including those in Gaza.

Arguably, the shift towards a one-state paradigm has been underway for some time. The senior Palestinian PLO leadership remains wedded to the concept of two states. But many other Palestinians – particularly amongst younger generations – have long ago reached the conclusion that a viable and truly sovereign Palestinian state has slipped through their grasp.

All, however, agree that Israel’s unrelenting drive to settle the occupied West Bank, combined with international timidity, has led to the unravelling of the two-state project over the past years.

https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/indepth/2020/5/5/israeli-annexation-cements-a-one-state-reality-in-palestine

Since its inception Israel has NEVER obeyed the laws of humanity…..and the world overlooked because of the suffering that was foisted upon them during WW2….that was 75 years ago….all debts have been paid…..Israel needs to act like the civilized nation they pretend to be.

Why should Palestinians be satisfied with being part of a nation that stole their land with the good wishes of the Western world?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

What Is It About The Middle East?

My area of interest is the Middle East…I was schooled in its history, culture and situation…..plus I worked in the region for many years and learned to love the customs and the people.

But over the years and the US foreign policy of the Middle East has come full circle…..

“We are opening a Pandora’s Box,” Dwight Eisenhower warned when he ordered the first U.S. combat mission in the region. Little did he know how right he would be.

In 1958, U.S. leaders stood at the threshold of an American era in the Middle East, conflicted about whether it was worth the trouble to usher in.

A year earlier, in the context of the emergent Cold War and fading British and French power in the region, Dwight Eisenhower had articulated and received congressional approval for what became known as the Eisenhower doctrine. The United States had for the first time staked out national interests in the Middle East—oil, U.S. bases and allies, Soviet containment—and declared that it was prepared to defend them with military force.

Sixty-two years before President Donald Trump dispatched a drone to Baghdad to kill Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, this is how American combat missions in the post–World War II Middle East began.

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2020/01/america-has-come-full-circle-middle-east/162655/

Our Middle East policies of today were born in World War 2 and Operation Torch……

In a radical rethinking of the origins of U.S. Middle East policy, Robert Satloff suggests that two key ideas guiding Washington’s actions in the region for the past three-quarters of a century were born in the bargain U.S. leaders made with Vichy French officers after Allied troops landed in North Africa during World War II.

This was Operation Torch, America’s first offensive operation in the European theater of war and, until Operation Overlord’s Normandy landings, the greatest amphibious attack in history. Today, it is all but forgotten. And yet, aside from rivaling Overlord in terms of its enormity, complexity, and peril, Torch was also vastly consequential, for it helped to determine the future course and ultimately successful conclusion of the war. If that weren’t significant enough, Torch also deserves to be remembered for the critical role it played in setting the terms of America’s long-term relationship with the rulers and peoples of the Middle East.

https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/operation-torch-and-the-birth-of-american-middle-east-policy-75-years-on

Even with a raging pandemic the Middle East is as dangerous as it ever was…..or will be…..

The Middle East is, arguably, in as dangerous a condition as it has been in its modern history. A single incident could spark an escalation, which – uncontrolled – could set off a chain reaction of violent confrontations, involving local, regional and extra-regional powers. Established mechanisms for bringing individual conflicts, such as the wars in Syria and Yemen, to a peaceful resolution are making only halting, if any, progress. When a crisis of this magnitude crests, but before it erupts into full-blown war, the attention it attracts can create new opportunities for preventive action. The notion of a collective and inclusive security dialogue that aims to diminish tensions has been around for many years, focused on the Gulf sub-region. The time to launch one is overdue. The first step is to produce concrete ideas and international support for such a dialogue, which can open new channels of communication. To maximise chances of success, the effort should start modestly, possibly initiated by smaller Gulf states with the active diplomatic backing of a group of European and other governments.

https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/gulf-and-arabian-peninsula/212-middle-east-between-collective-security-and-collective-breakdown

The UN has called for an international ceasefire during the pandemic…..and yet NO major power has signed on….apparently using ordinance is more important than fighting the disease.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The Kurds: Now What?

The votes have been counted and the Kurds overwhelmingly voted to set up a free Kurdistan……about 92% in favor of session.

There is NO one that sees this vote as a positive thing for Iraq or the wider Middle East and that includes the Kurds biggest ally….the United States.

The PM of Iraq, Abadi, has demanded that the results of the vote be nullified……

The results of the Iraqi Kurdistan referendum on secession are in, with over 92% of the voters in favor of seceding from Iraq. Iraq’s Prime Minister Hayder Abadi has threatened military action in retaliation.

In fact, Abadi is now demanding that the Kurds totally cancel the vote, even though it’s already taken place and the results are already in, saying he will “never discuss” the results of the referendum because Iraq’s parliament didn’t give them permission for it.

Iraqi officials seem to be throwing everything at the situation in Kurdistan now and seeing what sticks. Demands for the Kurds to surrender their airports have been spurned, and Kurdish officials had ruled out returning to Baghdad’s rule before Abadi’s latest demands were even made.

The Iraqi Parliament has asked the OM to send in troops and retake the district from the Kurds…

With Iraqi Kurdistan voting for secession, the fate of the Kirkuk Province is very much in doubt. It’s not legally part of the Kurdistan territory, but historically has had a large Kurdish population, and was “annexed” by Iraqi Kurdistan after it was taken early in the ISIS war.

The oil-rich province could be a major bone of contention, with Iraq’s parliament urging Prime Minister Hayder Abadi to send in troops and physically reconquer the province from the Kurds.

They might have help. Kirkuk Province has an ethnic Turkmen minority,  and that has Turkey’s nationalist MHP Party leader Devlet Bahceli vowing that the Kurds will never rule over Kirkuk.

The Turkmen….a relatively unknown ethnic group has stepped out of the shadows and volunteered to fight the Kurds….but for who are their loyalties?  Turkey? Or Iraq?

Thousands of Turkish volunteers are ready to fight in Kirkuk and other Iraqi cities to defend the country’s Turkmen population, the head of Turkey’s nationalist opposition said on Wednesday.

Devlet Bahceli said the minority Turkmen, who have close ethnic ties to Turkey, would not be abandoned in Kirkuk.

The city, home to Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens, has been controlled by Kurdish peshmerga fighters since 2014 and Kurdish authorities included it in this week’s referendum for Kurdish independence in northern Iraq, angering the Baghdad government.

(Reuters)

ISIS is a dying problem…..the Kurds are a problem on the rise…..the violence is far from over.

Today, Friday, will be a telling day in this situation…..

In response to more than 90% of Iraqi Kurds voting in favor of independence through peaceful means, the Iraqi government has issued the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) an ultimatum: hand over control over your airports and control of your borders. The Iraqi government is threatening an air embargo if the Kurds don’t comply with the demand. The move shows exactly how weak Baghdad is. Knowing it can’t force the Kurds to comply militarily on the ground, it’s only option is to threaten civilian air traffic.

The Kurds have until 6:00 pm local time on Friday to comply. They are unlikely to do so.

The Iraqi government has ruled out negotiations. “The referendum will have a negative impact on all of Iraq and the KRG. We will never compromise the unity and sovereignty of Iraq. We will not have any negotiations with regards to the outcome of the referendum,” said Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

The Iraqi Prime Minister’s stance may start a civil war in the country, a war he can’t possibly hope to win without US troops fighting the war for him. Given the US State Department’s opposition to democracy in the country, that may be a possibility.

The next question to ponder is……Is this the end of Iraq?

There are many worthy markers that America’s Iraq Wars have been a terrible, terrible waste, but as history loves a signature event, let it be the 25 September, 2017 Kurdish independence referendum. While the referendum is non-binding and the final vote tally may not be known for several days (though it will certainly be “yes” to independence), the true results of America’s decades of war in Iraq are already clear.

Along with the ongoing decimation of Iraq’s Sunni population, the referendum means that in practice “Iraq” no longer exists. In its place is a Shiite state dominated by Iran, the de facto new nation of Kurdistan, and a shrinking population of Sunnis tottering between annihilation or reservation-like existence, depending on whether the United States uses the last of its influence to sketch out red lines or abandons the people to fate.

The waste comes in that a better version of a de facto tri-state Iraq was available in 2006. Every life lost (out of a million some, including 4,424 Americans), every dollar spent (in the trillions), and every unanticipated outcome suffered (rise of Daesh, conflict in Syria, de-democratization of Turkey) since then has been unnecessary.

Source: Why the Kurdish referendum means the end of Iraq – Middle East Monitor

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