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The next big event comes June 24, when Turks will vote for their next president and parliament. For Erdogan and his opponents, the stakes are as high as ever. If he wins, Erdogan will assume the Turkish presidency’s expanded executive powers, granted by the bitterly fought referendum in 2017.
“Years of irresponsible policies have overheated the Turkish economy. High inflation rates and current account deficits are going to prove sticky,” Atilla Yesilada, an analyst with Istanbul-based Global Source Partners, said to The Washington Post. “I think we are at the end of our rope.”
“Opposition leaders have also cited encouraging poll numbers that they say reflect voter fatigue with the president after a tumultuous few years in Turkey marked by growing tensions with some of the country’s NATO allies and intensifying social polarization at home,” wrote The Post’s Istanbul bureau chief, Kareem Fahim. “The results suggest a possible opposition victory — if not in the presidential race, then in the parliament, where they hope to roll back the majority held by Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, or AKP.”
Erdogan’s main opponent in the presidential race is Muharrem Ince of the Republican People’s Party, a centrist party once associated with decades of stifling secularism as well as the repression of ethnic minorities carried out by the Turkish state. Ince, a former schoolteacher, has worked assiduously to dispel this image and champion a more inclusive future.
Turkish presidential candidate Muharrem Ince spoke to a crowd of enthusiastic supporters from atop a bus at a rally in Kadikoy, near Istanbul, on June 8.(Muharrem Ince)
The challengers say that Erdogan is hobbling the country by sparring with the European Union and NATO, and making moves that tanked the Turkish currency. “The policies that Erdogan or his government are following do not help Turkey stand up on her own feet in almost all aspects and policies, whether economic or foreign policies,” Islamist presidential candidate Temel Karamollaoglu said to the Guardian. “His method of approach, the discourse, causes polarization in Turkey.”
But there are limits to the time-for-change argument. “The opposition’s main message is, enough is enough. You have been in power too long, you represent the past,” Omer Taspinar of the Brookings Institute said to Fahim. “Maybe that would work if he was 80 years old. Erdogan is still a force to reckon with, despite his vulnerabilities. He has done well for the middle class.”
As in elections in 2015, all eyes are on the Kurdish vote. Kurds represent about 20 percent of the country’s population; Erdogan, who moved to liberalize restrictions on Kurdish cultural rights, once drew tremendous backing from religiously-minded Kurdish voters. But the resumption of conflict with Kurdish militant groups in Turkey, Syria and Iraq has weakened that support, as has his government’s persecution of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, or HDP, a left-wing, pro-Kurdish party that Ankara accuses of collusion with outlawed Kurdish militants.
If the HDP can win more than 10 percent of the national vote required to gain seats in Turkey’s parliament — as it did in June 2015 — Erdogan’s AKP will struggle to win a majority. The HDP’s charismatic leader, Selahattin Demirtas, has been thrown in jail on terrorism-related charges he and his supporters flatly reject. He is running for president behind bars.
“The Kurds are a reality, and in every country in the Middle East, in Iraq, Turkey, Syria, they are on the front lines for the struggle of democracy,” Demirtas told me in an interview in 2016, before he was sent to prison. “There’s a fundamental ideological conflict between the Kurds and Erdogan, who has a Turkish Islamist ideology.”
Erdoğan is running for president, of course, but who else is in the running for control?
What is happening in Turkey?
The country will hold presidential and parliamentary elections on 24 June. If no candidate wins an outright majority in the first round of the presidential elections, a second round will be held on 8 July between the top two candidates in the race.
Why are the elections being held now?
The elections were supposed to be in November 2019. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, however, called for early elections back in April. He said that Turkey needed to “overcome uncertainty” at a troubled time in the region, amid its ongoing military operations in Syria and Iraq.
This is arguably the most important election in Turkey’s modern history. The new president will assume an office imbued with sweeping executive powers that voters narrowly approved in a constitutional referendum last year. These include the power to issue decrees with the force of law, appoint the cabinet and vice-presidents as well as senior judges. If he wins, Erdoğan will continue to shape Turkey and its society for years to come.
Who is running for president?
Erdoğan, of course. He remains the most popular political leader in Turkey. But he faces several important opponents who have done unexpectedly well so far in the campaign, and, as a result, a second-round contest is now the most likely outcome.
There is Muharrem İnce, a charismatic physics teacher who is the candidate of the main opposition group, the Republican People’s party (CHP), and Meral Akşener, nicknamed the ‘she-wolf’. She is the leader of the new nationalist Iyi (Good) party and is popular with both youth and working-class Turks.
Temel Karamollaoğlu, the leader of the Islamist Felicity party, is also running, and has emerged as a key critic of Erdoğan even though their parties share ideological roots. Selahattin Demirtaş, a charismatic politician once dubbed the ‘Kurdish Obama’ and who leads the leftist and Kurdish issue-oriented People’s Democratic party (HDP), is running for the presidency from his prison cell in the city of Edirne. He awaits trial on terrorism charges.
What’s happening in parliament?
There are two main coalitions running for parliament.
The first includes the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) of Erdoğan, which are in a coalition with the nationalists.
On the opposite side is an alliance that includes the secularists of the CHP, the breakaway nationalists of the Iyi party, and the Islamists of the Felicity party. They make strange bedfellows in a political system where secularists and Islamists have traditionally been bitter enemies, but such is the importance of these elections that former rivals have banded together to oust the president and his entourage. The HDP is running by itself.
The Turkish constitution requires that parties obtain at least 10% of the national vote to enter parliament, a law that favours larger parties. A new bill recently allowed the formation of election alliances like those described above, which will allow smaller parties like Felicity to win some seats in the legislature if their alliance as a whole crosses the 10% threshold.
If the opposition alliance performs as expected, and the HDP gets over 10% of the popular vote, the ruling AKP could lose its majority in parliament.
So who will win?
Erdoğan was hoping to catch his opponents by surprise when he called for a vote, but attendance at ruling party rallies has been lacklustre, and the Turkish leader does not appear to be at the top of his game. The economy has also caused headaches, with the Turkish lira falling in value against the dollar, concerns mounting over the long-term health of the economy, and fears over the Central Bank’s independence.
Still, Erdoğan is the most popular Turkish politician, and is likely to win the presidential race. Polls are notoriously unreliable in Turkey, but for now it looks like he will easily win the first round, but without an outright majority. A second-round race against Ince or Aksener still favours the president, but is increasingly looking too close to call. It will depend on whether the opposition can draw away conservative and nationalist voters, as well as Kurdish voters angry about Erdogan’s alliance with the nationalists.
Also, there is a very real possibility that Erdoğan will win the presidency but lose parliament to the opposition, which has promised to roll back the constitutional amendments passed last year.
But, under those same amendments, the president can dissolve parliament, and the legislature can call new presidential elections in response. According to some ruling party officials, that’s exactly what Erdoğan might do, which would give his party a chance at a do-over, but plunge Turkey into uncertainty.
The Turkish economy is an impressive one; with 7.4% economic growth and the creation of one million jobs, Turkey was the fastest growing G-20 economy in 2017. This growth exceeded all expectations including the IMF ones and surpassed the Chinese figures, hitting a new record. The socioeconomic measures showed rapid improvement as the income of Turkish citizens has doubled more than once during recent years. President Erdogan has paid great attention to improving the military industry infrastructure; Ankara spends around $18 billion on the defence budget annually and half of its equipment is made domestically. Records show a 18% increase in defence exports in 2017, reaching $1.65 billion, and President Erdogan aims to produce defence exports worth $25 billion by 2023.
In an attempt to secure the country’s democratic transition and to avoid being trapped in the critical zone, Mr.Erdogan accepted moving the planned elections of 2019 forward by more than a year. However, the devil was wearing an election tag, and the economic situation deteriorated dramatically. The Turkish Lira hit its lowest point in eight years, recording 4.39 against the Dollar and resulting in a 13% loss. Speculations about the ability of the central bank and the government to manage the crisis have been discussed in regional and global media on a daily basis. The talk about the economic voting in the forthcoming elections on the 24 June occupies all the news headlines.
Looking Behind the Charts:
The conventional wisdom will be that we are facing an economic tragedy moving at a rocket speed heading towards its target on the election day to hit Erdogan. Nevertheless, looking behind the charts, and digging deep in the story, several questions remain unanswered. Are we witnessing a natural economic disaster that follows the rule that success breeds active inertia and active inertia breeds failure? Or are we watching another planned orchestrated crisis designed to remove President Erdogan via reinventing the 2016 failing coup attempt in a new economic vehicle?
To answer these questions, we should explore the Turkish case in the context of its geopolitical relations, its role in the region, economic rivals, the nature of ties and diplomatic relations with major players in the region.
The Invisible Hands: Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Israel
Economic collapse is not a product of a few weeks and not in the case of the strong Turkish economy. The ongoing tension with other regimes in the region, in addition to the forecasted conflict of interest, offers a better explanation of the foggy picture.
I argue that Turkey represents the only remaining form of the democratic transition state in the region. In Egypt, a similar orchestrated economic crisis involved a fuel shortage story and faked inflation among other tools, which were used to remove the first freely elected President in 2013 via a military coup led by field-marshal Abdelfattah AlSisi, the current Egyptian President. Not surprisingly, UAE, Israel and Saudi Arabia (the same group in the Turkish case) were the main supporters of the Egyptian coup. Injected billions of dollars in the Egyptian economy, they attempted to support the Sisi regime after the successful coup. The two Gulf states saw the new-born democratic Egypt as a direct threat to their Monarchies. Israel considered the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as a critical threat being unable to maintain control over the elected government.
In contrast, Erdogan had close ties with Morsi, stands firmly against the coup and hosts thousands of Egyptian opposition groups and members of the former government.
On June 5, 2017, the same invisible hand decided to cut ties and blockaded Qatar based on acquisitions that Qatar was supporting the free press, Egyptian opposition, and Hamas. President Erdgoan has been a major supporter of Doha on this front and all acquisitions were rejected by the international community.
In the same context, the tension between Ankara and Israel goes back to the Davos incident in 2009, when Erdogan stormed out of a World Economic Forum debate following a clash with the Israeli president over Israel’s offensive against Gaza. Bilateral relations deteriorated when Israeli naval commandos intercepted the Turkish ship Marmara en route to breach the Israeli blockade of Gaza. That incident led to the deaths of eight Turks and one Turkish-American. Recently, the picture turned black because Erdogan is the only leader in the region who clearly stood against the announcement of Jerusalem as the official capital of Israel, expelled the Israeli ambassador from Ankara and calling Israel a terrorist state over the killing of civilians in Gaza.
In recent years, the charismatic president has become a symbolic leader across the Arabic and Islamic world; he has even been called Sultan Erdogan among people in the Arabic and Islamic streets. Turkish cinema is significant in magnifying this leadership role and has brought the legacy of the Ottoman Empire to the hearts and minds of hundreds of millions of people around the world. The leaders of the invisible hand’s group lack this Erdoganian-charismatic style and consider it a real threat to their crowns and regimes. Furthermore, Erdogan’s futuristic vision of Turkey in 2023 following the end of the Lausanne treaty, controlling the channel linking between the two seas Black and Marmara and beginning oil exploration and drilling, is another nightmare for the invisible hand’s group and some countries in the west.
Voting the Future on June 24:
In the view of the above, there are no doubts that Erdogan’s vision and philosophy represent a significant threat to the invisible hand’s group in addition to some western countries on both the political and economic fronts. It is my argument that these countries will endeavour to reinvent a new economic coup on the way to the June 24 elections, as confirmed by the Turkish Prime Minister in his recent TV interview.
However, the answer to the futuristic question about where Turkey is heading remains in the hands of the Turkish people who will vote for their next president soon. The choice is whether to continue Erdogan’s remarkable economic and power journey heading toward 2023 or to fall into the trap of manipulated politics, political instability, regional and global influence, in the best-case scenario landing on a toxic economic zone similar to the one of Egypt.
“في 11 أيار/مايو، خاطب پاتريك كلاوسون، كاثرين باور، ومايكل سينغ منتدى سياسي في معهد واشنطن. وباور هي زميلة “بلومنستين كاتس” في برنامج مكافحة الإرهاب في المعهد، ومستشارة سياسية بارزة سابقة لشؤون إيران في “مكتب تمويل الإرهاب والجرائم المالية” التابع لـ “وزارة المالية” الأمريكية. وكلاوسون هو زميل أقدم في زمالة “مورنينغستار” ومدير الأبحاث في المعهد، ومؤلف الدراسة التي صدرت مؤخراً باللغة الانكليزية بعنوان، “القضايا التكتيكية المحيطة بالانسحاب الأمريكي من الاتفاق النووي مع إيران“. وسينغ هو زميل أقدم في زمالة “لين- سويغ” والمدير الإداري في المعهد، وقد شغل منصب مدير أقدم لشؤون الشرق الأوسط في “مجلس الأمن القومي” الأمريكي في الفترة 2005 – 2008. وفيما يلي ملخص المقررة لملاحظاتهم”.
پاتريك كلاوسون
في إيران، كما في بلدان أخرى، غالباً ما تكون السياسة محلية. وعلى الرغم من عناوين الأخبار، لا يركّز الشعب الإيراني ولا النخب السياسية على «خطة العمل الشاملة المشتركة»، المعروفة بالاتفاق النووي، الذي قررت إدارة ترامب الانسحاب منه مؤخراً. وبالنسبة إلى النخب، تنطوي القضية الجوهرية على تحديد مَن سيخلف المرشد الأعلى الحالي، آية الله علي خامنئي، أو أي كيان سيقوم بذلك. وفي الواقع، عند وفاة خامنئي، سيصبح النظام عرضة للمعاناة. ويرجع ذلك جزئياً إلى أن خامنئي لم يسمح ببروز أي خليفة له.
وفي الواقع، سيكون «الحرس الثوري الإسلامي» الإيراني المستفيد المحتمل، مما قد يقود الجمهورية الإسلامية نحو توجه أكثر عسكرياً وعلمانياً، على غرار النماذج القديمة التي وضعتها سوريا البعثية، والعراق البعثي، ومصر الناصرية. وبذلك يمكنها أن تنتقل من نظام سياسي أيديولوجي إلى نظام عسكري فاسد يدّعي التمسّك بالتزاماته الثورية – ويقوم بممارسة الاعتداءات في الخارج لتبرير وجوده. ويشير المقال الافتتاحي الذي نُشر مؤخراً على نطاق واسع تحت عنوان “دفاعاً عن رئيس عسكري”، إلى التأييد الشعبي لهذا التغيير في نموذج القيادة، كما توحي الهتافات في ألعاب كرة القدم بقبول واسع لهذا المفهوم.
لقد أصبح «الحرس الثوري الإسلامي» حالياً كياناً قوياً من خلال ممارسة قوته من دون كلل – وتحديداً توسيع نفوذ طهران في الشرق الأوسط. فسواء في العراق أو سوريا أو لبنان أو اليمن، بإمكان إيران أن تشير إلى سياسة النشاط الإقليمي باعتبارها أعظم نجاح لها منذ الثورة عام 1979. ومن مزايا نموذج «الحرس الثوري»، تكلفته المنخفضة نسبياً، لا سيّما عند مقارنته بالنموذج الأمريكي في مساعدة الحلفاء. ففي العراق، يغطّي «الحرس الثوري» تكاليف وجوده من خلال الكسب غير المشروع وأنشطة أخرى تحقق له الكسب المادي.
وبناءً على ذلك، لن تؤدي العقوبات المفروضة على سوق النفط الإيراني إلى جعل طهران “تجثوا على ركبتيها” [تنحني طوعاً]. وعلى الرغم من أن العقوبات ستقلّص بالتأكيد الصادرات الإيرانية، إلا أنّ الارتفاع المحتمل في أسعار النفط سيكون له أثر تعويضي، وقد يترك الإيرادات على ما كانت عليه قبل العقوبات. ومع ذلك، فبصورة عامة، لا يزال الاقتصاد الإيراني ضعيفاً. ومع استمرار هبوط الريال (“التومان”) الإيراني، وتحمل الإيرانيين العاديين العبء الأكبر، تَحوّل الاهتمام الشعبي إلى مشاكل البلاد المالية ومصادرها. ومن جهته، سعى «الحرس الثوري» إلى تحويل أي تركيز عن الفساد والمحسوبية المستشريَيْن، وهي اتهامات ردّدها أفراد معتدلون مثل الرئيس حسن روحاني. إلا أن إشراف روحاني نفسه على الاقتصاد، منذ أن أصبح رئيساً عام 2013، كان فاشلاً ولم يتمكن من الوفاء بوعوده. فبدلاً من أن تسهّل «خطة العمل الشاملة المشتركة» تحقيق مكاسب مالية، أدّى الفساد المحلي والتخبّط البيروقراطي إلى إحباط آمال النمو المالي والاستثمار الأجنبي. بالإضافة إلى ذلك، أضعفت الأزمة المصرفية المحلية الحالية ثقة الإيرانيين في قدرة قادتهم على إصلاح الضرر الاقتصادي.
وإجمالاً، ازداد نفوذ «الحرس الثوري» منذ عام 2013، في حين أخذ يتراجع تأثير المعتدلين أمثال روحاني. كما أن تدهور الاقتصاد سيؤدي إلى تقويض آمال الناس في التغيير من خلال الإصلاح البطيء، مما يقلل بدوره من احتمالات عودة إيران إلى طاولة المفاوضات
كاثرين باور
على الرغم من أن «خطة العمل الشاملة المشتركة» لم تكن تذكرة ذهبية، إلا أنها منحت إيران فرصة للاندماج مجدداً في الاقتصاد العالمي. وعلى وجه التحديد، مكّنت إيران من الدخول مجدداً إلى سوق الطاقة وسمحت لها بالقيام بأعمال تجارية مع كيانات أجنبية ومؤسسات مالية تنخرط في “معاملات كبيرة” مع الكيانات الإيرانية المصنّفة – والعكس بالعكس. وفي الواقع، فمن منظور العقوبات، يشير الانسحاب الأمريكي من «خطة العمل الشاملة المشتركة» إلى العودة إلى النظام الذي كان قائماً قبل التوقيع على الاتفاق النووي، وهو: حظر اقتصادي على الجمهورية الإسلامية.
وستعود بعض العقوبات إلى حيز التنفيذ بعد تسعين يوماً، ولكن بعد 180 يوماً، ستُفعّل جميع حالات الحظر التي تم رفعها وفقاً لـ «خطة العمل الشاملة المشتركة»، ويشمل ذلك الحظر على الطاقة (النفط والغاز)، وقطاع الشحن البحري، و”البنك المركزي الإيراني”. وفي الوقت نفسه، سيتم مجدداً فرض عقوبات على نحو أربعمائة شخص وكيان إيراني. وفي حين تتمتع الإدارة الأمريكية بقدر وافر من حرية التصرف، إلا أنها تواجه حالياً معضلة حول كيفية تنفيذ أحكام هذه العقوبات الرئيسية، خاصة فيما يتعلق بتفسير ما يعتبر “صفقة هامة” وشروط “تخفيض الإعفاءات بشكل كبير”.
وفي نهاية المطاف، سيتعيّن اتخاذ قرار سياسي بشأن درجة الإنفاذ. وقد أعرب الرئيس ترامب أنه يريد ممارسة “أقصى قدر ممكن من الضغط” على النظام الإيراني، ولكن قد يكون من المنطقي تأخير التنفيذ أو إلغائه – أو ترخيص بعض الأنشطة. ومن شأن ذلك أن يبدي حسن النية السياسية مع نظرائه الأوروبيين ويتجنب الدمار الدبلوماسي، لا سيّما عندما لا يكون للتنفيذ القوي أثر ملحوظ على أهداف السياسات العامة.
وستتطلع الحكومات الأوروبية إلى التقليل من تداعيات الانسحاب الأمريكي من «خطة العمل الشاملة المشتركة»، سواء بالنسبة لشركاتها الخاصة أو للحفاظ على المنافع لإيران. ولكن ليس أمامها سوى خيارات واضحة قليلة للقيام بذلك. على سبيل المثال، كانت التوجيهات الصادرة عن “مكتب مراقبة الأصول الأجنبية” واضحة، وهي أنه لن يتم العمل بالعقود التي وقّعت قبل إعادة فرض العقوبات، لأن ممارسة الأعمال التجارية بعملة غير أمريكية سيبقى معرضاً للعقوبات الأمريكية. بالإضافة إلى ذلك، فإن العقوبة التي تخاطر بها المؤسسات المالية هي ليست مجرد غرامة مالية، بل من المحتمل فقدان إمكانية الوصول إلى النظام المالي الأمريكي والدولار الأمريكي.
وبالتالي، يجب على الحكومة الأمريكية أن تسعى أولاً إلى توفير أقصى قدر من الوضوح في إعادة فرض هذه العقوبات. وفي حين قد يجادل البعض بأن ترك القوانين غامضة قد يجبر شركات معينة على “عدم المخاطرة” من خلال الانسحاب الكامل من السوق الإيرانية، إلّا أنّ هذا الاتجاه سيقوّض جهود الولايات المتحدة الرامية إلى جعل حلفائها يتفقون معها على هذا الأمر. بالإضافة إلى ذلك، يمكن أن يهدد ذلك قيام ردود فعل دولية تهدف إلى تجنّب التعامل كلياً مع النظام المالي الأمريكي، مما قد يجعل العقوبات الأمريكية أقل فاعلية عموماً على المدى البعيد. وعلى هذا النحو، يجب على وزارة المالية الأمريكية أن تؤكد أيضاً على أن هذه المحظورات لا تهدف إلى معاقبة القطاع الخاص، وأن التعاون ضروري لتحقيق أهداف السياسة الأمريكية.
وأخيراً، سيكون من المهم إدراج أساس سردي واضح للعقوبات الجديدة. وخير مثال على ذلك التصنيف الأخير لشبكة تبادل عملات قامت بشراء مبالغ نقدية كبيرة بالدولار الأمريكي بشكل مخادع لصالح «قوة القدس» التابعة لـ «فيلق الحرس الثوري الإسلامي» لتمويل وكلائها الإقليميين. وكان هذا النهج القائم على الأدلة، والمرجح أن يبقى كذلك، أفضل فرصة للعمل المنسّق المتعدد الجهات.
مايكل سينغ
أثرت ثلاثة عوامل أساسية على انسحاب الرئيس الأمريكي من «خطة العمل الشاملة المشتركة». ويتعلق العامل الأول بنقد جوهر الاتفاق نفسه، بدلاً من القلق بشأن امتثال إيران [لالتزاماتها بموجب اتفاقات الضمانات لمعاهدة عدم انتشار الأسلحة النووية]. وعلى وجه التحديد، شعر مسؤولون في الحكومة الأمريكية بالقلق لأن الاتفاق النووي لم يفعل الكثير لمنع السلوك العدائي الإيراني، مثل تطوير قدرات الأسلحة النووية، لفترة قصيرة جداً. وفي المقابل، رأوا أن التخفيف من العقوبات الذي مُنح [لإيران] من خلال «خطة العمل الشاملة المشتركة» هو أمر واسع جداً ويستمر وقتاً طويلاً. بالإضافة إلى ذلك، حدّ الاتفاق من خيارات السياسة الأمريكية المتاحة للتعامل مع سلوك إيران المتعلق بتطوير كل من الصواريخ البالستية ودعم القوى المعادية للمصالح الأمريكية في جميع أنحاء المنطقة.
ثانياً، شعرت الإدارة الأمريكية بالضعف الاقتصادي والسياسي الذي يسود النظام الإيراني في الوقت الراهن.
أمّا العامل الثالث فيتعلق بالإعلان عن استئناف المحادثات مع كوريا الشمالية، والذي حدث قبل أربعة أيام من حلول موعد تجديد فترة الإعفاءات. وتمهيداً للمفاوضات المحتملة مع جمهورية كوريا الديمقراطية الشعبية، كانت الإدارة الأمريكية تسعى إلى تكوين وجهة نظر مفادها أن الولايات المتحدة لن ترضى بأي اتفاق. وهنا، ربما كان يدور بخلد الإدارة الأمريكية الرغبة في تكرار النموذج الكوري الشمالي مع إيران، وهو ممارسة “أقصى قدر ممكن من الضغط” مقترناً بالرغبة في الدخول في مفاوضات واسعة النطاق.و في الواقع، يتنافس القرار بشأن إيران مع كوريا الشمالية، ومع التعريفات على الفولاذ والألمنيوم، والعديد من أولويات السياسة الخارجية الأخرى في واشنطن.
وفي الحملات السابقة لفرض عقوبات على إيران، كانت الإدارات الأمريكية قد اتبعت قدراً هائلاً من الدبلوماسية لضمان تنفيذ آليات الرقابة القائمة على أسواق رأس المال في إطار متعدد الأطراف والالتزام بها. ففي عام 2006، على سبيل المثال، تبنّت الولايات المتحدة سلسلة من قرارات مجلس الأمن الدولي التي وضعت الأساس الدبلوماسي للتنسيق مع الاتحاد الأوروبي إلى جانب روسيا والصين.
وستكون هذه المرة الأولى التي تسعى فيها واشنطن إلى فرض هذا النوع من العقوبات في ظل هذا الاختلاف الاستراتيجي الحاد مع حلفائها الدبلوماسيين. وسيركز الأوروبيون على وجه الخصوص على تهدئة طهران والإبقاء على الاتفاق معها، وبالتالي إعطاء إيران نفوذ للتفاوض على اتفاق أفضل مع الأطراف الموقعة المتبقية.
ومن الآن فصاعداً، يجب على الولايات المتحدة أن تحاول إصلاح بعض الخلافات بينها وبين حلفائها الأوروبيين من خلال استمرار المحادثات مع بريطانيا وفرنسا وألمانيا (“مجموعة الدول الأوروبية الثلاث”) على وجه التحديد والجهات الفاعلة الأخرى – حتى وإن نتج عن ذلك تقديم بعض التنازلات بشأن العقوبات. ينبغي على واشنطن أيضاً أن تحدد الانسحاب من «خطة العمل الشاملة المشتركة» في سياق استراتيجية ذات نطاق أوسع تجاه إيران. ومن شأن اتباع نهج شامل، إلى جانب الدعم المقدم من “مجموعة الدول الأوروبية الثلاث”، أن يسمح بنوع من التنسيق الذي تحتاجه واشنطن لممارسة أقصى درجات الضغط على الجمهورية الإسلامية.
A country taps its past as it leads the way on one of the most pressing issues facing modern democracies: how to regulate the world’s biggest social network.
BERLIN — Security is tight at this brick building on the western edge of Berlin. Inside, a sign warns: “Everybody without a badge is a potential spy!”
Spread over five floors, hundreds of men and women sit in rows of six scanning their computer screens. All have signed nondisclosure agreements. Four trauma specialists are at their disposal seven days a week.
They are the agents of Facebook. And they have the power to decide what is free speech and what is hate speech.
This is a deletion center, one of Facebook’s largest, with more than 1,200 content moderators. They are cleaning up content — from terrorist propaganda to Nazi symbols to child abuse — that violates the law or the company’s community standards.
Germany, home to a tough new online hate speech law, has become a laboratory for one of the most pressing issues for governments today: how and whether to regulate the world’s biggest social network.
Around the world, Facebook and other social networking platforms are facing a backlash over their failures to safeguard privacy, disinformation campaigns and the digital reach of hate groups.
In India, seven people were beaten to death after a false viral message on the Facebook subsidiary WhatsApp. In Myanmar, violence against the Rohingya minority was fueled, in part, by misinformation spread on Facebook. In the United States, Congress called Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, to testify about the company’s inability to protect its users’ privacy.
As the world confronts these rising forces, Europe, and Germany in particular, have emerged as the de facto regulators of the industry, exerting influence beyond their own borders. Berlin’s digital crackdown on hate speech, which took effect on Jan. 1, is being closely watched by other countries. And German officials are playing a major role behind one of Europe’s most aggressive moves to rein in technology companies, strict data privacy rules that take effect across the European Union on May 25 and are prompting global changes.
Gerd Billen, the secretary of state for Germany’s Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection, says that data protection is a fundamental right.
“For them, data is the raw material that makes them money,” said Gerd Billen, secretary of state in Germany’s Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection. “For us, data protection is a fundamental right that underpins our democratic institutions.”
Germany’s troubled history has placed it on the front line of a modern tug-of-war between democracies and digital platforms.
In the country of the Holocaust, the commitment against hate speech is as fierce as the commitment to free speech. Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” is only available in an annotated version. Swastikas are illegal. Inciting hatred is punishable by up to five years in jail.
But banned posts, pictures and videos have routinely lingered on Facebook and other social media platforms. Now companies that systematically fail to remove “obviously illegal” content within 24 hours face fines of up to 50 million euros.
The deletion center predates the legislation, but its efforts have taken on new urgency. Every day content moderators in Berlin, hired by a third-party firm and working exclusively on Facebook, pore over thousands of posts flagged by users as upsetting or potentially illegal and make a judgment: Ignore, delete or, in particularly tricky cases, “escalate” to a global team of Facebook lawyers with expertise in German regulation.
Some decisions to delete are easy. Posts about Holocaust denial and genocidal rants against particular groups like refugees are obvious ones for taking down.
Others are less so. On Dec. 31, the day before the new law took effect, a far-right lawmaker reacted to an Arabic New Year’s tweet from the Cologne police, accusing them of appeasing “barbaric, Muslim, gang-raping groups of men.”
The request to block a screenshot of the lawmaker’s post wound up in the queue of Nils, a 35-year-old agent in the Berlin deletion center. His judgment was to let it stand. A colleague thought it should come down. Ultimately, the post was sent to lawyers in Dublin, London, Silicon Valley and Hamburg. By the afternoon it had been deleted, prompting a storm of criticism about the new legislation, known here as the “Facebook Law.”
“A lot of stuff is clear-cut,” Nils said. Facebook, citing his safety, did not allow him to give his surname. “But then there is the borderline stuff.”
Complicated cases have raised concerns that the threat of the new rules’ steep fines and 24-hour window for making decisions encourage “over-blocking” by companies, a sort of defensive censorship of content that is not actually illegal.
The far-right Alternative of Germany, a noisy and prolific user of social media, has been quick to proclaim “the end of free speech.” Human rights organizations have warned that the legislation was inspiring authoritarian governments to copy it.
Other people argue that the law simply gives a private company too much authority to decide what constitutes illegal hate speech in a democracy, an argument that Facebook, which favored voluntary guidelines, made against the law.
“It is perfectly appropriate for the German government to set standards,” said Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s vice president of communications and public policy. “But we think it’s a bad idea for the German government to outsource the decision of what is lawful and what is not.”
Richard Allen, Facebook’s vice president for public policy in Europe, leaving a meeting at Germany’s justice ministry in March.CreditSean Gallup/Getty Images
Richard Allan, Facebook’s vice president for public policy in Europe and the leader of the company’s lobbying effort against the German legislation, put it more simply: “We don’t want to be the arbiters of free speech.”
German officials counter that social media platforms are the arbiters anyway.
It all boils down to one question, said Mr. Billen, who helped draw up the new legislation: “Who is sovereign? Parliament or Facebook?”
Learning From (German) History
When Nils applied for a job at the deletion center, the first question the recruiter asked him was: “Do you know what you will see here?”
Nils has seen it all. Child torture. Mutilations. Suicides. Even murder: He once saw a video of a man cutting a heart out of a living human being.
And then there is hate.
“You see all the ugliness of the world here,” Nils said. “Everyone is against everyone else. Everyone is complaining about that other group. And everyone is saying the same horrible things.”
The issue is deeply personal for Nils. He has a 4-year-old daughter. “I’m also doing this for her,” he said.
The center here is run by Arvato, a German service provider owned by the conglomerate Bertelsmann. The agents have a broad purview, reviewing content from a half-dozen countries. Those with a focus on Germany must know Facebook’s community standards and, as of January, the basics of German hate speech and defamation law.
“Two agents looking at the same post should come up with the same decision,” says Karsten König, who manages Arvato’s partnership with Facebook.
The Berlin center opened with 200 employees in 2015, as Germany was opening its doors to hundreds of thousands of migrants.
Anas Modamani, a Syrian refugee, with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany in Berlin in September 2015.
Anas Modamani, a Syrian refugee, posed with Chancellor Angela Merkel and posted the image on Facebook. It instantly became a symbol of her decision to allowing in hundreds of thousands of migrants.
Soon it also became a symbol of the backlash.
The image showed up in false reports linking Mr. Modamani to terrorist attacks in Brussels and on a Christmas market in Berlin. He sought an injunction against Facebook to stop such posts from being shared but eventually lost.
The arrival of nearly 1.4 million migrants in Germany has tested the country’s resolve to keep a tight lid on hate speech. The law on illegal speech was long-established but enforcement in the digital realm was scattershot before the new legislation.
Posts calling refugees rapists, Neanderthals and scum survived for weeks, according to jugendschutz.net, a publicly funded internet safety organization. Many were never taken down. Researchers at jugendschutz.net reported a tripling in observed hate speech in the second half of 2015.
Mr. Billen, the secretary of state in charge of the new law, was alarmed. In September 2015, he convened executives from Facebook and other social media sites at the justice ministry, a building that was once the epicenter of state propaganda for the Communist East. A task force for fighting hate speech was created. A couple of months later, Facebook and other companies signed a joint declaration, promising to “examine flagged content and block or delete the majority of illegal posts within 24 hours.”
But the problem did not go away. Over the 15 months that followed, independent researchers, hired by the government, twice posed as ordinary users and flagged illegal hate speech. During the tests, they found that Facebook had deleted 46 percent and 39 percent.
“They knew that they were a platform for criminal behavior and for calls to commit criminal acts, but they presented themselves to us as a wolf in sheep skin,” said Mr. Billen, a poker-faced civil servant with stern black frames on his glasses.
By March 2017, the German government had lost patience and started drafting legislation. The Network Enforcement Law was born, setting out 21 types of content that are “manifestly illegal” and requiring social media platforms to act quickly.
Officials say early indications suggest the rules have served their purpose. Facebook’s performance on removing illegal hate speech in Germany rose to 100 percent over the past year, according to the latest spot check of the European Union.
Platforms must publish biannual reports on their efforts. The first is expected in July.
At Facebook’s Berlin offices, Mr. Allan acknowledged that under the earlier voluntary agreement, the company had not acted decisively enough at first.
“It was too little and it was too slow,” he said. But, he added, “that has changed.”
He cited another independent report for the European Commission from last summer that showed Facebook was by then removing 80 percent of hate speech posts in Germany.
The reason for the improvement was not German legislation, he said, but a voluntary code of conduct with the European Union. Facebook’s results have improved in all European countries, not just in Germany, Mr. Allan said.
“There was no need for legislation,” he said.
Mr. Billen disagrees.
“They could have prevented the law,” he said. YouTube scored 90 percent in last year’s monitoring exercise. If other platforms had done the same, there would be no law today, he said.
A Regulatory Dilemma
Germany’s hard-line approach to hate speech and data privacy once made it an outlier in Europe. The country’s stance is now more mainstream, an evolution seen in the justice commissioner in Brussels.
Vera Jourova, the European Union’s justice commissioner, deleted her Facebook account in 2015 because she could no longer stand the hate.
Vera Jourova, the justice commissioner, deleted her Facebook account in 2015 because she could not stand the hate anymore.
“It felt good,” she said about pressing the button. She added: “It felt like taking back control.”
But Ms. Jourova, who grew up behind the Iron Curtain in what is now the Czech Republic, had long been skeptical about governments legislating any aspect of free speech, including hate speech. Her father lost his job after making a disparaging comment about the Soviet invasion in 1968, barring her from going to university until she married and took her husband’s name.
“I lived half my life in the atmosphere driven by Soviet propaganda,” she said. “The golden principle was: If you repeat a lie a hundred times it becomes the truth.”
When Germany started considering a law, she instead preferred a voluntary code of conduct. In 2016, platforms like Facebook promised European users easy reporting tools and committed to removing most illegal posts brought to their attention within 24 hours.
The approach worked well enough, Ms. Jourova said. It was also the quickest way to act because the 28 member states in the European Union differed so much about whether and how to legislate.
But the stance of many governments toward Facebook has hardened since it emerged that the consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had harvested the personal data of up to 87 million users. Representatives of the European Parliament have asked Mr. Zuckerberg to come to Brussels to “clarify issues related to the use of personal data” and he has agreed to come as soon as next week.
Ms. Jourova, whose job is to protect the data of over 500 million Europeans, has hardened her stance as well.
Israeli military’s international spokesman says some Palestinians ‘that weren’t the target’ were hit, but fiercely defended the military’s response
A senior Israeli army spokesman admitted Tuesday that Israel failed to minimize the number of Palestinian casualties during the recent deadly protests on the Gaza border, and that some were hit by mistake. He added that Hamas won the PR war by a “knockout.”
Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, the international spokesman and head of social media for the Israel Defense Forces, made the comments during a Jewish community briefing organized by the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA).
The officer fiercely defended the military’s response to the recent protests along the Gaza border, in which more than 100 Palestinians were killed and thousands more wounded, most of them by live fire.
skip – IDF spokesman responds to Gaza Strip border scenes
IDF spokesman responds to Gaza Strip border scenes – דלג
Many commentators have said Hamas won a PR victory following the worldwide media coverage given to the bloody scenes, especially following Monday’s juxtaposition of scenes on the Gaza border and the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.
Conricus said Israel hasn’t been able to explain the situation on the border well enough to the international media.
“We haven’t been able to get that message out of how it is from our side, what we are defending – and the ‘winning picture’ overwhelmingly, by a knockout, unfortunately, have been the graphics from the Palestinian side. The amount of casualties has done us a tremendous disservice, unfortunately, and it has been very difficult to tell our story.”
Conricus acknowledged that the IDF had failed to minimize the number of casualties. However, he noted that “Hamas wanted the casualties. Hamas wanted people to die. Hamas wanted the pictures of the wounded and the overflowing hospitals … and they had no problems sending the human shields forward. That is the sad reality of what we have been facing,” he said.
While blaming Hamas for sending “rioters” to the border area and using civilians as human shields, Conricus also conceded that the army snipers didn’t always hit their intended targets.
Palestinian protesters carrying a wounded woman during a protest on the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel, May 15, 2018.Khalil Hamra/AP
On the border, he said, the army deploys “combat soldiers, devoted, [who] understand what they are defending,” and are not “trigger-happy, undisciplined.” The soldiers “take orders from their superior officers” and are “executing their missions with discipline, with professionalism and using their weapons proportionately and as they are intented according to the rules of engagement,” Conricus said.
“Now, have there been mistakes? Have there been bullets that missed their target and hit people that weren’t the target?” he continued. “Of course they have. But I can tell you that it is a chaotic environment on the border. There is tear gas. There is smoke from the tires. There is screaming. There is loudspeakers, there’s the sirens from the ambulances and, most importantly, there’s masses of rioters trying to tear down the fence, throwing rocks, throwing molotov cocktails, throwing grenades.”
Conricus said Israel could not afford to let the risk of letting the protesters break through the fence, for fear they might attack kibbutzim and communities that are mere hundreds of meters from the border.
“When the dilemma came to, on one hand, defending the Israeli border and Israeli communities immediately behind the border, or allowing the rioters through and having a lower amount of Palestinian casualties, there’s no dilemma,” Conricus said.
“There is no dilemma for soldiers and commanders in the IDF,” he added. “On the other hand, we have tried to be as accurate, as deliberate and as specific as possible, using only sniper rifles … with standard NATO ammunition … so we have done a lot to try and minimize casualties. Have we been successful at it? Unfortunately, no. ”
“We have a fact-finding mission … with full authority to investigate and question and to flag events that the commander of that team thinks are problematic. And they also have the authority to recommend criminal investigations against Israeli officers and soldiers,” he explained. “That mechanism has been in place for more than four weeks. It has investigated a few events,” he added.
skip – IDF international spokesman’s full briefing to Jewish Federations of North America
In response to this article, the IDF spokesperson’s unit sent a clarification paragraph saying:
“The things partially quoted were taken out of context , distort the broader context in which they were said and do not reflect the spirit of discourse nor the stance of the IDF. This was a conversation with leaders of Jewish organizations in the U.S., a part of the call to action conducted by IDF spokesperson with different elements around the world.”
After an initial attendance list was published in Haaretz, several countries – including Serbia, Vietnam, Peru, El Salvador and the Ivory Coast – denied they had confirmed their attendance and said they weren’t planning to come.
Twenty-two foreign envoys attended the Foreign Ministry receptionon Sunday in honor of the U.S. Embassy’s move to Jerusalem the following day, according to the final list of participants submitted to Haaretz at its request. Before the event, the ministry had said 32 foreign representatives had confirmed they would attend, of the 86 who were invited.
Besides the four representatives from Austria, Hungary, Romania and the Czech Republic, which bucked the European Union’s stanceagainst the U.S. Embassy move, ambassadors or other representatives attended from the following countries: Guatemala, Paraguay, Honduras, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Macedonia , Myanmar, Angola, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of the Congo, Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Zambia and Tanzania. The other EU nations boycotted the reception.
The earlier list of the countries confirming attendance at the Foreign Ministry reception had included Albania, Ivory Coast, El Salvador, Panama, Peru, the Philippines, Serbia, South Sudan, Thailand, Ukraine and Vietnam. After the earlier list was published in Haaretz, several of these countries – Serbia, Vietnam, Peru, El Salvador and the Ivory Coast – denied they had confirmed their attendance and said they weren’t planning to come. Bulgaria was also first mentioned as a European planning to attend, but its local representatives denied this. Bosnia had not appeared in the previous list.
Particularly striking was the absence of representatives from Russia, India and Japan, whose leaders recently held widely publicized meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and had made speeches about upgrading relations with Israel. The Foreign Ministry believes the countries that had confirmed attendance but later denied it had been pressured not to participate.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the Palestinian leadership would not stand for having Palestinian rights become bargaining chips with the U.S. administration or Israel.
“We have recalled for consultation the ambassadors in Romania, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Austria, all of them European Union countries,” said Palestinian Deputy Foreign Minister Amal Jadou. “We are taking this step after the ambassadors of these countries in Tel Aviv attended the Israeli celebrations for the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.”
Jadou added, “We cherish our relations with all the countries of the European Union. These relationships are based on a commitment to international law, UN resolutions and human rights. We believe that attending this event contradicts those values. The transfer of the American Embassy to Jerusalem was not only a hostile step against the Palestinian people mourning the 70 years of the Nakba [when more than 700,000 Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes during the War of Independence], but also a violation of international law.”
At the reception held at the Foreign Ministry headquarters in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said to the foreign envoys: “Do you know how to identify real leadership? It’s when people follow you, and people follow [U.S.] President [Donald] Trump. I call upon all countries to join the United States and transfer their embassies to Jerusalem, which is the right thing to do because it promotes peace.”
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan said at the event, “Everyone gathered here understands that opening the embassy is a recognition of reality that should have already happened.”
The event was attended by Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband and Trump’s senior adviser Jared Kushner, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, along with a delegation of senators and congressmen.
The Israelis in attendance included government ministers, MKs (mostly from the coalition), Foreign Service officials, the Mossad chief, as well as associates of Netanyahu, including Miriam and Sheldon Adelson, Netanyahu’s former adviser Natan Eshel and even Sara Netanyahu’s personal stylist, Sandra Ringler.
After being shut out of embassy celebrations by evangelicals and ultra-Orthodox, many mainstream Jews face crisis and anguish over Israeli response to Palestinian protests
Left: A wounded Palestinian demonstrator being evacuated during the protest against the U.S. Embassy move to Jerusalem; right, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner at the embassy inauguration, May 14, 2018.REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa, AFP PHOTO / Menahem KAHANA
Those in attendance had all sworn loyalty to the president and belonged to one of the groups that has hailed him as a modern-day Cyrus the Great: Orthodox Jews, right-wing Israelis (including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) and the pro-Trump Republican base – particularly those in the evangelical community.
This was all on display from the ceremony’s opening blessing, by Texan Baptist megachurch pastor Dr. Robert Jeffress. His eyes squeezed closed in prayer, he thanked God for “our great president, Donald Trump,” lauded how Israel “has blessed this world by pointing us to you, the one true God, through the message of her prophets, her scriptures, and the Messiah,” and praying for Jerusalem “in the name of the spirit of the Prince of Peace, Jesus our lord.”
Standing beside him, also offering prayers in praise of Trump and Netanyahu, was ultra-Orthodox Chabad Rabbi Zalman Wolowik – a personal friend of U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman.
Members of IfNotNow and rabbinical school students blocking traffic while protesting the U.S. Embassy move to Jerusalem and Israeli violence against Palestinians in Gaza, Washington, May 14, 2018.Gili Getz
The ceremony was bookended with a benediction by another Trump stalwart: The televangelist founder of Christians United For Israel, Pastor John Hagee, who noted that “Jerusalem is where [the] Messiah will come and establish a kingdom that will never end,” and led the crowd in a final shout of “Hallelujah!”
In the front row, flanking Netanyahu and his wife Sara, were Jewish first daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner – who attend a Chabad synagogue – as well as Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson, who has just committed $30 million to GOP election races across the country and offered to pay for at least part of the new Jerusalem embassy himself. (His offer was ultimately declined).
Prominent Democratic political leaders – even the long-term, pro-Israel Jewish ones – were nowhere to be found. Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro, who still lives in Israel, was pointedly not invited to the event, despite the fact he went against many of his former colleagues from the Obama White House by supporting and praising the embassy move. No matter: As a non-Orthodox Democrat, he too was persona non grata.
For mainstream American Jewry, being so visibly shut out of an event that many had previously hoped and lobbied for – allied to the event’s dominance by evangelical leaders with controversial views on Jews, Muslims, Mormons and homosexuality – was disturbing enough.
But the fact they were being represented by the likes of Ivanka, Kushner and Adelson, while simultaneously being bombarded with disturbing images of the violence on the Gaza border, triggered a full-on crisis for many.
Sadness and confusion permeated the statements of Jewish leaders, and these sentiments – intensified with anger – exploded across social media
Union for Reform Judaism President Rabbi Rick Jacobs said he was “alarmed, concerned, and profoundly saddened by the growing number of Gazan dead and wounded. It does not have to be this way.”
Regarding the embassy ceremony, Jacobs said, “The Trump Administration declared its commitment to promoting a peaceful solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict by celebrating the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. We also celebrate the opening of the Embassy as an affirmation of the deep and lasting ties between the U.S. and Israel. However, we remain very much aware of the lack of progress toward a long-term just solution for Israelis and Palestinians
J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami harshly criticized the timing of the ceremony, saying the decision to hold it to “coincide with both the anniversary of Israeli independence and the Palestinian ‘Naqba’ [sic]” has “thrown more fuel on an already raging fire.” Ben-Ami was referring to the Palestinian term for the establishment of the State of Israel, which means “Catastrophe” in Arabic and is marked yearly on May 15.
Ben-Ami added that “opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem and official American recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital should be a moment of celebration for all of us who feel deeply connected to Jerusalem and recognize its importance to the Jewish people over the millenia [sic]. However, the manner and timing of this move were designed to advance the agenda of right-wing political leaders in the US and Israel, rather than the interest of Americans, Israelis and Palestinians in resolving the conflict.”
He continued: “One only has to observe the campaign rally atmosphere in Jerusalem today to realize that the greatest interest being served is President Trump’s desire to fulfill a campaign promise – and to cater to the views of ‘Greater Israel’ advocates like Ambassador David Friedman, Sheldon Adelson, bigoted pastor Robert Jeffress and their friends in the Israeli government.”
The views of American Jews were expressed in far rawer form on Twitter, with many confessing to feelings of shame about events in Jerusalem and Gaza.
Ivanka Trump and Kushner, meanwhile, were targeted by Jewish celebrities like Chelsea Handler and Bette Midler, who took aim at the couple on Twitter.
Handler wrote, “I’m glad Ivanka and Jared could take time away from their busy schedules of not being qualified to represent the US to go represent the US, and celebrate moving the capital in exchange for the adelson’s donations, while 50+ Palestinians have been killed.” Midler added, “You lose the PR advantage on this one, #MrTrump, with those two images side be [sic] side, Ivanka and Jared yukking it up in Jerusalem while the Palestinians get shot at. Perfect, you moron.”
Ultimately, though, any criticism by American Jews, liberals or the media about the embassy ceremony or distress over U.S. responsibility for the deaths in Gaza was utterly irrelevant, as far as the White House was concerned.
If Adelson was happy enough to continue plowing his millions into Republican campaigns, and if Jeffress, Hagee and the rest of the pro-Trump evangelical base believe the embassy move has brought them one step closer to redemption and will turn out in force for the 2018 midterms – for President Trump, his mission has been accomplished.
The presence and visibility of the evangelical leaders at Monday’s inauguration demonstrated the true source of the political muscle that made the embassy move a reality. Even the banners around Jerusalem in praise of Trump were paid for by Friends of Zion, the brainchild of evangelical leader and Christian Zionist Mike Evans.Conspicuously absent from the stage were any mainstream Orthodox, Conservative or Reform rabbis. In the audience, high-level representatives of the U.S. non-Orthodox Jewish majority were few and far between, though not entirely absent. Anti-Defamation League Director Jonathan Greenblatt was in attendance, for example.A typical tweet came from Christina Duval, who wrote: “I am very proud to be Jewish, but I am completely ashamed of what’s going on in Israel. After all our people suffered, you’d think we’d value human lives a lot more.”
At least 43 Palestinians have been killed and 2,200 wounded by Israeli troops, Palestinian officials say, on the deadliest day of violence since the 2014 Gaza war.
The violence came as the US opened its embassy in Jerusalem, a move that has infuriated Palestinians.
They see it as clear US backing for Israeli rule over the whole city, whose eastern part Palestinians lay claim to.
But US President Donald Trump hailed the move in a video message.
He said it had been a “long time coming”, adding: “Israel is a sovereign nation with the right to determine its own capital but for many years we failed to recognise the obvious.”
The US, he added, remained “committed to facilitating a lasting peace agreement”.
What happened at the border?
Palestinians hurled stones and incendiary devices while the Israeli military used snipers, as black smoke poured from burning tyres.
The health ministry, run by Gaza’s Islamist rulers Hamas, said children were among those killed on Monday.
The Hamas-led demonstrations are part of a six-week protest dubbed the “Great March of Return”.
Image copyrightAFPImage captionHundreds of people have been injured, according to Palestinian officials
Israel says the protests are aimed at breaching the border and attacking Israeli communities nearby.
The Israeli military said 40,000 Palestinians had taken part in “violent riots” at 13 locations along the Gaza Strip security fence.
It said the Israeli military had killed three people trying to plant explosives near the security fence in Rafah. Aircraft and tanks had also targeted military positions belonging to Hamas in the northern Gaza Strip, it said.
There have also been violent clashes between Israeli police and protesters who raised Palestinian flags outside the new embassy. Several protesters were detained.
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini has called for “utmost restraint”.
What led to the Gaza protests?
Palestinians have held weekly protests in the run-up to their annual commemoration of what they call the Nakba or Catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands of their people fled their homes or were displaced following the foundation of the Israeli state on 14 May 1948.
Scores of Palestinians have been killed since the protests began. Thousands more have been wounded.
Hamas, which is in a state of conflict with Israel, had said it would step up protests in the lead-up to Tuesday, the official Nakba commemoration.
It says it wants to draw attention to what Palestinians insist is their right to return to ancestral homes in what became Israel.
“Today is the big day when we will cross the fence and tell Israel and the world we will not accept being occupied forever,” a science teacher in Gaza, Ali, told Reuters news agency.
What was opened and who attended?
A small interim embassy will start operating from Monday inside the existing US consulate building in Jerusalem. A larger site will be found later when the rest of the embassy moves from Tel Aviv.
Image copyrightEPAImage captionIvanka Trump spoke briefly at the embassy’s opening ceremony
The opening ceremony was brought forward to coincide with the state of Israel’s 70th anniversary.
Mr Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and her husband Jared Kushner, who are both senior White House advisers, joined US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan for the ceremony.
After Ivanka Trump had unveiled the seal of the embassy, Mr Kushner said in his address: “When President Trump makes a promise he keeps it… We have shown the world that the US can be trusted. We stand with our friends and allies.”
Mr Kushner also referred to Mr Trump’s withdrawal from the “dangerous, flawed and one-sided Iran deal”, drawing applause from the guests.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “What a glorious day. Remember this moment. This is history. President Trump, by recognising history, you have made history. All of us are deeply grateful.”
A spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday: “With this step, the US administration has cancelled its role in the peace process and has insulted the world, the Palestinian people and the Arab and the Islamic nation and it has created incitement and instability.”
Arab League chief Ahmed Abul Gheit said it was “shameful to see countries participating with the US and Israel in celebrating the former’s embassy move to occupied Jerusalem in a clear and grave violation of international law”.
Why is the embassy move so controversial?
The status of Jerusalem goes to the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem is not recognised internationally and, according to the 1993 Israel-Palestinian peace accords, the final status of Jerusalem is meant to be discussed in the latter stages of peace talks.
Israel has occupied East Jerusalem since the 1967 Middle East war. It effectively annexed the sector, though this was not recognised by any countries until Mr Trump’s declaration in December 2017.
Media captionWhy the ancient city of Jerusalem is so important
Since 1967, Israel has built a dozen settlements, home to about 200,000 Jews, in East Jerusalem. These are considered illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
Various countries once had embassies based in Jerusalem but many moved after Israel passed a law in 1980 formally making Jerusalem its capital.
A boost for Netanyahu
By Jeremy Bowen, BBC Middle East editor, Jerusalem
The embassy move is the culmination of one of the best weeks in the political life of Mr Netanyahu.
First President Trump kept his promise to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal. Now the US embassy is moving.
Placards in Jerusalem praise Mr Trump. The local football club, Beitar, infamous for fans who chant “death to Arabs”, has included “Trump” in its name.
The embassy move has been rejected by the main allies of Israel and the US. Palestinians are protesting in their thousands in Gaza.
It is much more low-key in the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem.
The embassy move is good for the Netanyahu government, good for President Trump’s base and makes most Israelis pleased but there is no evidence to back Mr Netanyahu’s claim that it is good for peace.
في الأنظمة الملكية الخليجية، تقف العلاقات المدنية-العسكرية عند منعطف. فخلافاً للمنظومة
كانت قطر الدولة الخليجية الأولى التي طبّقت التجنيد الإلزامي للذكور في العام 2013، ففرضت على الشباب الذين تتراوح أعمارهم من 18 إلى 35 عاماً التسجّل لأداء الخدمة العسكرية لمدة تتراوح من 3 إلى 4 أشهر – ومدّدتها إلى عام كامل في آذار/مارس 2018. وحذت الإمارات العربية المتحدة حذوها في العام 2014، ففرضت على الشباب الذين تتراوح أعمارهم من 18 إلى 30 عاماً الخدمة العسكرية لمدّة تتراوح من 9 أشهر إلى عامَين، بحسب مستواهم العلمي، وفي العام 2017، أعادت الكويت أيضاً العمل بالتجنيد الإلزامي لمدة عام واحد للذكور في الفئة العمرية 18-35 عاماً، بعدما كانت قد ألغته في العام 2001. وفي قطر، يمكن استدعاء الأشخاص الذين أتمّوا خدمتهم العسكرية، إلى الخدمة الفعلية بحسب الاقتضاء، في غضون الأعوام العشرة اللاحقة حتى سن الأربعين، وفي حالة الحرب، أو فرض القانون العسكري، يمكن الاحتفاظ بالمجنّدين الإلزاميين حتى بعد انتهاء مدّة خدمتهم. كذلك باستطاعة الكويت استدعاء المجنّدين السابقين لمدّة 30 يوماً في السنة حتى بلوغهم سن الـ45، وتفرض الإمارات خضوع المجنّدين السابقين لتدريبات سنوية تمتد لأسبوعَين إلى أربعة أسابيع حتى بلوغهم سن الـ58 (أو الـ60 في حالة الضباط).
لا يُستدعى جميع الرجال المسجّلين في هذه البلدان، إلى الخدمة، وتُجيز القوانين التأجيل والإعفاء – مثلاً في الكويتوالإماراتوقطر، وإلى جانب الأسباب الصحية، يمكن إعفاء الشخص من التجنيد الإلزامي إذا كان “نجل شهيد” ويؤدّي أيضاً دور المعيل الأساسي لأسرته. إنما تُفرَض عقوباتماليةوجزائية على المتهرّبين من التجنيد الإلزامي أو مَن يمتنعون عن التسجّل.
علاوةً على ذلك، أطلقت الإمارات التجنيد الطوعي للإناث لفترة تسعة أشهر في حزيران/يونيو 2014، ثم مدّدتها إلى اثنَي عشر شهراً في العام 2016. وفعلت قطر الأمر عينه في آذار/مارس 2018؛ وفي 26 شباط/فبراير 2018، أعلنت السعودية أيضاً بدء الخدمة العسكرية الطوعية للإناث. كذلك اقترح وزير الدفاع الكويتي، ناصر صباح الأحمد الصباح، فرض التجنيد الإلزامي للإناث.
على النقيض، في شباط/فبراير 2018، استبعد نائب رئيس اللجنة الأمنية في مجلس الشورى السعودي، اللواء عبد الهادي العمري، إمكانية فرض التجنيد الإلزامي للذكور السعوديين، معلِّلاً ذلك بأن التجنيد الطوعي لا يزال يلبّي احتياجات القوات المسلحة السعودية على صعيد العديد البشري. بيد أن عدداً كبيراً من الأصوات السعودية أبدى في العلن دعمه لفرض الخدمة العسكرية الإلزامية، ومنهم مفتي المملكة الشيخ عبد العزيز آل الشيخ، الذي شدّد على ضرورة التدريب العسكري للذكور في أزمنة التهديدات الجيوسياسية المتصاعدة، وعضو مجلس الشورى إقبال درندري التي دعت إلىتطبيق التجنيد الإلزامي للذكور والإناث معتبرةً أنه واجب وطني.
يعكس هذا الاعتماد على التجنيد الإلزامي الجهود التي تبذلها الأنظمة الملكية في الخليج للتعامل مع التغييرات الإقليمية المترابطة. على وجه الخصوص، أدّى الهبوط في أسعار النفط العالمية إلى تراجع قدرة تلك الأنظمة على تأمين الرعاية الاجتماعية والمنافع للرعايا الأجانب، بما في ذل أولئك الذين خدموا في جيوشها. كما أن عدم الاستقرار الإقليمي والحضور المتنامي للأفرقاء المتشددين غير الدولتيين ولّدا رغبة في توطيد الرابط الوطني. على الرغم من المخاطر السياسية المحتملة التي ينطوي عليها التجنيد الإلزامي، إنه تكتيك فاعل لتعزيز الولاء والحس الوطني، وفق ما ظهر في مراحل التوريث الملكي. فعلى سبيل المثال، أُقِرّ قانون الخدمة الوطنية في قطر في تشرين الثاني/نوفمبر 2013، بعد أشهر قليلة من تسلّم الشيخ تميم بن حمد آل ثاني سدّة العرش في حزيران/يونيو. ويتزامن القرار الذي اتخذته السعودية بإفساح المجال أمام النساء للالتحاق بالخدمة العسكرية، مع عمليات عسكرية غير مسبوقة في اليمن، وإعادة تنظيم كاملة للقطاع الأمني، و”السعودة” التدريجية لليد العاملة التي يطبّقها ولي العهد وزير الدفاع محمد بن سلمان.
يسلّط الخطاب العام مزيداً من الضوء على الهدف الذي تسعى إليه دول الخليج. فالخدمة العسكرية الإلزامية سوف تساعد القطريين ليصبحوا “مواطنين مثاليين“، وفق ما جاء على لسان وزير الدولة القطري لشؤون الدفاع، اللواء الركن حمد بن علي العطية، قبل إطلاق البرنامج، مسلِّطاً الضوء على الغرض الذي تتوخّاه المبادرة في مجال التربية المدنية: تشكّل المحاضرات عن التاريخ الوطني والأمن والمواطَنة جزءاً من برنامج الخدمة الوطنية القطري، وهو نموذج اقتدت به الإمارات والكويت لدى إطلاقهما التجنيد الإلزامي. وقد تعمد قطر أيضاً إلى استثمار مزيد من الموارد المالية والبشرية في الخدمة العسكرية: تساهم المقاطعة التي تفرضها السعودية والإمارات والبحرين راهناً على قطر، في تعزيز المشاعر القومية لدى القطريين الذين يميلون أكثر من أي وقت مضى، إلى الأخذ بالرأي القائل بأنه من واجبهم أن يقدّموا خدمة عسكرية إلى بلادهم.
كذلك صيغت الخدمة العسكرية في الإمارات في شكل برنامج تعليمي وطني يُكمّل مقرر التدريب العسكري الأساسي والمتخصص. حتى إن الإمارات أقدمت، في آذار/مارس 2016، على افتتاح مدرسة الخدمة الوطنية لحرس الرئاسة من أجل تأمين مزيد من التدريب التطبيقي، وتسعى إلى أن يستقر عدد المسجّلين في المدرسة عند صفَّين من 5000 مجنّد لكل صف في السنة. في العام 2016، أطلقت الإمارات نسخة مختصرة إضافية من الخدمة الوطنية للمتطوعين الذكور في الفئة العمرية 30-40 عاماً الذين يرغبون في الالتحاق بالخدمة العسكرية، فضلاً عن “خدمة بديلة” قائمة على العمل الإداري أو التقني ومخصّصة للمتطوعين الذين لا يستوفون الشروط الأساسية.
يمزج التجنيد الإلزامي، مقروناً بالسياسات الخارجية ذات الدوافع العسكرية، بين التعبئة الوطنية وبثّ القوة في الخارج. يَظهر هذا الرابط بوضوح في الحداد الجماعي للجيوش الخليجية على جنودها – معظمهم من الإماراتيين – الذين لقوا مصرعهم في الحرب في اليمن. فبالإضافة إلى جنود حرس الرئاسة، أُرسِل بعض المجنّدين الإلزاميين الإماراتيين إلى اليمن، على الرغم من غياب الخبرة القتالية لديهم، مع العلم بأن الإمارات توقّفت عن إرسال هؤلاء المجنّدين بعد الهجوم الذي شنّه الحوثيون في مأرب وأسفر عن مقتل 45 إماراتياً في الرابع من أيلول/سبتمبر 2015. تُكرّم وسائل الإعلام المحلية والحكّام هؤلاء الجنود الذين يعتبرونهم شهداء الأمة، وفي تشرين الثاني/نوفمبر 2016، بادر مكتب شؤون أسر الشهداء إلى إنشاء واحة الكرامة في أبو ظبي، وهي عبارة عن نصب تذكاري دائم تكريماً للجنود الإماراتيين الذين قضوا نحبهم في خدمة الأمة.
كذلك تستخدم دول الخليج التجنيد الإلزامي لدعم السياسات المتعلقة بالشؤون الوطنية. فعلى سبيل المثال، تسعى الإمارات إلى خفض أعداد الرعايا الأجانب في الجيش، والذين كانوا يشكّلون نحو أربعين في المئة من القوات المسلحة في التسعينيات. وقد أعطت الإمارات العربية المتحدة، منذ ذلك الوقت، الأولوية للتجنيد من الإمارات الشمالية مثل رأس الخيمة، التي تضم مجتمعةً 61 في المئة من السكان، وذلك بهدف تعزيز روابطها مع أبو ظبي وزيادة الدعم الذي تقدّمه قبائل الإمارات الشمالية للجيش – وهي علاقة من شأن التجنيد الإلزامي أن يساهم في توطيدها. في خطوة مهمة، أعلنتالإمارات، في آب/أغسطس 2015، أن الأشخاص المولودين من أمهات إماراتيات وآباء أجانب (والممنوعين راهناً من الحصول على الجنسية) يصبحون مؤهّلين لنيل الجنسية في حال انضموا طوعاً إلى الخدمة الوطنية.
بالمثل، صوّت مجلس الأمة الكويتي مجدداً، في آذار/مارس 2018، على السماح للـ”بدون” الذين لا جنسية لهم، بالانضمام إلى الجيش، بعدما كانت هذه الممارسة قد توقّفت في العام 2004، وعلى البدء بقبول المتطوعين غير الكويتيين بصفة ضباط متعاقدين وضباط صف. على الرغم من أن أحد الأسباب وراء هذه الإجراءات هو معالجة التراجع في أعداد المتطوعين العسكريين في الكويت خلال الأعوام العشرة الماضية، إلا أن خيار فرض إلزامية الخدمة الوطنية – بدلاً من الاعتماد على المرتزقة – يسلّط الضوء على سعي الحكومة إلى ترسيخ الهوية الجماعية عن طريق الجيش.
في الكويت، يدعم التجنيد الإلزامي أيضاً الأهداف الاقتصادية الوطنية. فعلى الرغم من أن البلاد تضم نحو 6500 رجل ينتمون إلى الفئة العمرية المشمولة بالتجنيد الإلزامي بموجب القانون، إلا أن 140 منهم فقط التحقوا بالدفعة الأولى من مجنّدي الخدمة الوطنية. فبالإضافة إلى الشباب الذين لم يتسجّلوا ضمن المهلة المحددة، حصل 2233 شاباً من المؤهّلين للتجنيد الإلزامي، على إعفاء لدواعي التحصيل العلمي. علاوةً على ذلك، أبدى مجتمع الأعمال خشيته من أن إعادة العمل بالتجنيد الإلزامي قد تؤدّي إلى تعطيل الحياة المهنية للأشخاص، فوافق مجلس الأمة على إعفاء موظّفي القطاع الخاص من التجنيد الإلزامي. يشجّع هذا القرار المواطنين الكويتيين على اختيار العمل في القطاع الخاص، نظراً إلى أن القطاع العام يعاني من التخمة.
في الوقت نفسه، تسعى هذه السياسات إلى التعويض عن الإجراءات غير الشعبية الأخيرة، ومنها خفض الدعم الحكومي وزيادة الضرائب – لا سيما بدء العمل بالضرائب على القيمة المضافة في السعودية والإمارات في كانون الثاني/يناير 2018، واتّجاه دول الخليج الأخرى إلى اعتماد هذه الضرائب في العام 2019. في هذا السياق، يأتي الجنود في موقع الصدارة الرمزية على صعيد التضحيات التي تُطلَب راهناً من جميع المواطنين. فهذا لا يؤدّي فقط إلى الحد من المعارضة للخفض التدريجي للرعاية الاجتماعية، إنما يتيح أيضاً للحكّام أو أولياء العهد الجدد اعتماد السياسات الخارجية ذات الدوافع العسكرية التي يعوّلون عليها لإظهار أنفسهم في صورة القادة الأقوياء.
إذاً، الدافع الأساسي وراء الإجراءات الهرمية من الأعلى إلى الأسفل لزيادة مشاركة المواطنين في الأنشطة العسكرية، هو الأهداف الاجتماعية والثقافية، مثل تعزيز الشعور القومي، بدلاً من الأغراض محض العسكرية، مثل إنشاء قوة احتياطية، وهو ليس بالمهمة السهلة نظراً إلى النسبة المتدنّية للمواطنين في الدول الخليجية الصغيرة – مثلاً، يشكّل المواطنون نحو 12 في المئة فقط من سكّان قطر، و11 في المئة من سكان الإمارات.
تعمد الأنظمة الملكية الخليجية تدريجاً إلى إعادة صياغة نموذجها التقليدي للعلاقات المدنية-العسكرية، الذي استند حصراً في السابق إلى أمن النظام والاستراتيجيات المانِعة للانقلابات، في حين أنه كان هناك فصل واضح بين الجنود والمدنيين. وهكذا يؤدّي الجنود الآن، عبر تحريك الهويات الوطنية، دور “المحدِّثين” الذين يبنون علاقات وطيدة بين المجتمع والقوات المسلحة. في هذا الإطار، تعمد دول الخليج بصورة مطردة إلى استخدام التجنيد الإلزامي والتعامل معه كمشروع للهندسة الوطنية من أجل الحصول على الدعم الشعبي الذي تحتاج إليه هذه الدول لتحقيق الانتقال إلى نماذج ما بعد المنظومة الريعية، في خضم أجواء إقليمية متشنّجة.
* تُرجم هذا المقال من اللغة الإنكليزية.
إليونورا أردماغني زميلة بحوث معاوِنة في المعهد الإيطالي للدراسات السياسية الدولية، ومحلّلة في مؤسسة الكلية الدفاعية التابعة للناتو، وفي معهد أسبن-إيطاليا.
Gerd Billen, the secretary of state for Germany’s Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection, says that data protection is a fundamental right.
Anas Modamani, a Syrian refugee, with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany in Berlin in September 2015.
Vera Jourova, the European Union’s justice commissioner, deleted her Facebook account in 2015 because she could no longer stand the hate.
Middle East Politics 