Big political moves in the Mideast this week

Netanyahu is expected to name his new cabinet tomorrow. That announcement should include the publishing of the ruling coalition’s formal policy platform.
Netanyahu possibly previewed the foreign-policy aspects of it with this speech today.
Guess what. He says he’s pro- “peace.”
Meantime, the Arab League summit has already convened in Doha, Qatar. So far, Pres. Bashir of Sudan has turned up and been treated with all normal respect, confounding Darfur-rights activists who hoped his recent (and imho extremely foolish) indictment by the ICC would lead to his diplomatic isolation… Pres. Asad of Syria has opened the proceedings. And Pres. Qadhafi of Libya has thrown a hissy fit.
All in all, though, it looks as though the Arab rulers– except for Egypt’s Mubarak, who has his own huge problems these days– are quite happy to defy the attempts of many westerners to split them up into two sharply defined “you’re with us or against us” boxes on the question of Iran, and to mobilize the “with us” crowd into a strong coalition against Iran.
So, I think I’ll have plenty to write about by the time my IPS deadline rolls around Friday.

6 thoughts on “Big political moves in the Mideast this week”

  1. So the Arab league’s tolerance of Arab on black violence is even less worthy of comment than Arab on Arab violence? Indeed, it appears to be an ocasion for crowing and not even a proper issue for the ICC?

  2. Netanyahu . . . says he’s pro- “peace.”
    I discussed peace lingo in an article, including:
    *peace and stability operations = bombing, shooting, incarceration, assassinations etc. to conquer the people in the invaded country and build a new nation, i.e. peace and stability are really war and instability
    https://vintage.justworldnews.org/archives/003369.html
    Generally it’s a simple task to decipher the Newspeak of crusading Orwellian national leaders because they say the exact opposite of what they mean.

  3. from a news report:
    In an interview conducted shortly before he was sworn in today as prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu laid down a challenge for Barack Obama. The American president, he said, must stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons—and quickly—or an imperiled Israel may be forced to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities itself.
    Bibi has now “checked” Obama, considering Obama’s own repeated false claims that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. Is it check and mate?

  4. Bibi’s challenge also ties in with the recent letter from the House Foreign Affairs Committee to President Obama on U.S.-Iran policy.
    “Clearly, the Iranian nuclear program must be dealt with on an urgent basis.”
    s/Hoyer, Berman, Skelton, Reyes, Waxman, Ackerman and Wexler.
    A coincidence?

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