World roundup: November 7 2024
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Russia, Brazil, and elsewhere
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Tonight’s roundup is out early because I have a family commitment this evening. We’ll catch up on anything I miss tomorrow. Thanks for reading!
TODAY IN HISTORY
November 7, 1811: At the Battle of Tippecanoe, a US force led by future President William Henry Harrison (then governor of the Indiana Territory) defeats a group of Shawnee and allied tribal fighters and is able to destroy their nearby base, known as “Prophetstown.” Harrison had led a small army to Prophetstown with the aim of attacking an Indigenous confederacy formed by Shawnee chief Tecumseh (who was not present for the battle). Tecumseh’s brother, Tenskwatawa, led a group of the confederacy’s fighters in an attack on Harrison’s camp before dawn on November 7 but were ultimately unable to break the larger American force and had to retreat. Though fairly indecisive in its outcome the battle is considered one of the key engagements in “Tecumseh’s War,” a conflict that bled into the War of 1812. Today it’s probably best known as part of the campaign slogan for the Harrison-John Tyler presidential ticket in 1840: “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!”
November 7, 1917: The Third Battle of Gaza ends with the Ottoman Yıldırım Army Group abandoning Gaza and Britain’s Egyptian Expeditionary Force occupying the town. The first (in March) and second (in April) battles of Gaza had both ended in indecisive Ottoman victories, by which I mean the Ottomans held their positions but were unable to force the EEF back. Britain’s capture of Beersheba a week earlier was decisive and an extended British bombardment on November 6 proved to be the final straw for the Ottoman defenders. Capturing Gaza put the EEF well on its way to taking Jerusalem, which it would do around Christmas.
INTERNATIONAL
The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service reported on Thursday that 2024 is “virtually certain” to be the hottest ever recorded, with average temperatures that exceed the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement’s 1.5 degree Celsius warming limit. One year does not make a trend and temperatures may even curb down a bit next year depending on the course of the emerging La Niña phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean. But the trend toward uncontrolled warming is undeniable at this point and this month’s COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan will undoubtedly involve substantial discussion of climate adaptation as well as emissions reduction.
Which brings us to a second international item, the fact that support for developing nations to adapt to climate change remains woefully inadequate to the need. Developed countries, who caused this problem, spent a record $28 billion toward that aim in 2022. The need, according to the United Nations, is on the order of $359 billion per year. This will definitely be on the COP29 agenda but we can probably assume that developed nations will resist any significant increase in funding.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The Biden administration said on Thursday that Israeli officials have informed Washington of a plan to open the Kissufim checkpoint for humanitarian aid to pass into Gaza. This is obviously the Israeli government’s bid to satisfy the administration’s demand that it increase the level of aid entering the territory by November 13 or risk a diminution of US military support. Earlier this week, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that Israel was “failing” to satisfy that demand, though he refused to say what might happen on November 13 if there was no improvement.
What I would expect to happen now is that the deadline will roll around, the administration will claim that this pledge to open Kissufim is evidence that the Israelis are working to comply with the demand, and it will do nothing. Mind you, the Israelis promising to open another checkpoint doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t even mean they’ll actually open the checkpoint, let alone that doing so will increase the amount of aid getting into Gaza. But it will be enough to satisfy an administration that only imposed the deadline in the first place as a gambit in a political campaign that’s now over. If there is no subsequent increase in aid that will be portrayed as an Israeli betrayal of assurances it made to the administration even though there is every reason to believe that the administration is a willing and eager participant in the con.
The Israeli military (IDF) is now denying that it intends to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza, after having seemingly acknowledged it earlier this week. According to the IDF, comments earlier this week saying, among other things, that “there is no intention to allow the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes” were made by a single Israeli general, Itzik Cohen. I guess we’re supposed to believe that Cohen was speaking off the cuff because now the IDF says that his statements did not “reflect the IDF’s objectives and values.” I think we’ve seen the IDF’s values on full display for the past 13 months and they seem pretty harmonious with what Cohen said, but I digress. The IDF further says that Cohen was speaking on “background” and shouldn’t have been quoted, which is less a disavowal of what he said than a wish that it wouldn’t have been made public. Israeli officials are further insisting that they are allowing humanitarian aid to enter Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia, and Jabalya, which directly contradicts reports from civilians who have evacuated those areas.
An IDF airstrike killed at least 27 people in Jabalya on Thursday. That’s in addition to some 30 people killed elsewhere in the territory, including at least 12 in a school-turned-shelter in Gaza city’s Shati refugee camp. And Israeli police may have sparked an international incident when they stormed the Eleona church compound in Jerusalem and arrested two security personnel. That compound is owned by the French government, and French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot was actually scheduled to visit it on Thursday. He canceled that visit and the middle finger from the Israeli government is hard to miss. The French Foreign Ministry said it planned to summon Israel’s ambassador in Paris to lodge a complaint.
LEBANON
An Israeli airstrike near a security checkpoint in the southern city of Sidon killed at least three people on Thursday, according to the Lebanese military. The strike also wounded three Lebanese soldiers and five UN peacekeepers.
ASIA
PAKISTAN
A mortar strike killed two schoolchildren in northern Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Wednesday. Earlier in the day, a roadside bombing in the same province killed at least four Pakistani security personnel. Authorities say that their forces were able to kill five militants (identified as Pakistani Taliban) in the wake of the bombing.
Elsewhere, The Wall Street Journal reports that in its desperation to prevent the return of former Prime Minister Imran Khan to power, the Pakistani government is moving in “an increasingly authoritarian direction”:
New legislation in recent days has consolidated the government’s power after a shock election result earlier this year in which candidates backed by the country’s former prime minister took the most seats. Government officials have said the new laws are meant to bring stability, and accuse Khan, whose party has called repeated protest rallies over his imprisonment, of spreading chaos.
The coalition government, led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, curbed the powers of the courts in October. This month, it tabled a new law allowing for the detention of people who have committed no crime. The social-media platform X, which was used by Khan’s party to dispute the election, was banned days after the vote and remains blocked in the country.
This week, the government rushed through Parliament a law to extend the term of the army chief from three years to five years, while also allowing for a five-year extension. The current army chief, Gen. Asim Munir, who was due to step down next year, could now serve until 2032. The post is widely seen as the country’s most powerful office.
MYANMAR
A new report from the UN Development Program accuses Myanmar’s ruling junta of imposing “collective punishment” on civilians in the country’s Rakhine state, imposing economic blockades that threaten to push some 2 million people into starvation within a matter of months. The junta is responding to a successful campaign by the rebel Arakan Army but the result has been what the UN calls a “total economic collapse” that has seemingly had little effect on the rebels even as it is immiserating the general populace.
AFRICA
ETHIOPIA
According to the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, Oromo Liberation Army rebel fighters killed 48 people last week in an “ambush” in the Oromia region’s North Shewa district. The militants also reportedly abducted an unspecified number of people. The OLA is regularly accused of committing atrocities against civilians in Oromia, often targeting ethnic Amhara or other non-Oromo communities. The identities of these victims is unclear from the reporting.
MOZAMBIQUE
The Mozambican government put soldiers on the streets of the country’s capital, Maputo, on Thursday in anticipation of another post-election protect organized by the country’s political opposition. Authorities had been threatening to take this step. Human Rights Watch says that security forces have killed at least 18 people in protests since last month’s disputed election and that’s without getting the military directly involved. There are now concerns that President Filipe Nyusi could declare martial law, which would loosen rules of engagement and could open the door to higher levels of violence. I have not yet seen any indication as to whether Thursday’s planned protest actually took place.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
The secretary of the Russian government’s Security Council, Sergei Shoigu, floated the idea of settling the Ukraine War on Thursday in light of recent Russian military successes and of Donald Trump’s election. According to Reuters, Shoigu said “now, when the situation in the theater of military operations is not in favor of the Kyiv regime, the West is faced with a choice—to continue financing it and destroying the Ukrainian population or to recognize the current realities and start negotiating.”
It’s unclear on what terms Moscow would be interested in starting those negotiations. Vladimir Putin’s stated position is that he wants the Ukrainian government to disavow membership in NATO and to withdraw its military from the four mainland Ukrainian provinces that Russia claims to have annexed—Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia. Ukraine still controls parts of all of those provinces, including most of Kherson, and while it’s possible Putin would be willing to negotiate down from his proposal it seems unlikely under the circumstances. Kyiv has consistently demanded the full restoration of the country’s pre-2014 borders—which means the full restoration of those provinces as well as Crimea—which is at this point unrealistic to say the least. The only way to know how far either side might be willing to compromise to end the war is to actually start talking.
Elsewhere, the UK government on Thursday added 56 new entries to its Russian sanctions list, targeting Moscow’s “military industrial complex.” Among the new designees are three mercenary firms, including the Africa Corps. That outfit is the successor to the Wagner Group for its operations across the African continent.
GERMANY
The New Statesman’s Wolfgang Münchau analyzes the collapse of Germany’s governing coalition:
On 6 November, Olaf Scholz fired Christian Lindner as finance minister. The decision marks the formal end of the three-party coalition – between the Social Democrats (SDP), Greens and Free Democratic Party (FDP), the latter of which Lindner leads. Hr was fired after refusing to accept Scholz’s order to declare a state of fiscal emergency that would allow the government to bypass the rules of the debt brake, which limits the government’s ability to borrow money. Scholz went on national TV to declare that he wants to set aside money to support Ukraine, and for an increase in defence spending that has now become necessary after the victory of Trump. He also said he would not accept a trade-off of taking funds earmarked for social policies. This will be the theme of the election campaign – and the new dividing line in German politics.
The decision means that Germany will not have a 2025 budget unless Friedrich Merz, the opposition leader of the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), changes his mind. The FDP insisted that the increase in defence spending should be funded from the social budget. That was a red line for the SPD and the Greens. This is also the dividing line in Germany, the line around which the next election will be fought. How do we fund the increase in defence spending? The only two ways to fund higher defence spending is either inside the budget or outside. The SPD will not accept a redirection of social money to defence. Germany is a high-tax country. There is not much scope for tax increases either. The social budget is the ultimate red line around Scholz’s support for Ukraine and for his commitments inside Nato. The CDU and the FDP continue to place their red lines around the debt brake itself. Since neither SPD/Greens nor CDU/CSU/FDP are large enough to form a government between each other, they would have to form a coalition. A grand coalition between CDU/CSU and SPD would face the same unsolved dilemmas as the current one.
AMERICAS
BRAZIL
Deforestation in the Amazon from the period between August 2023 and this past July fell to its lowest annual level since 2015, according to Brazilian government data. Some 6288 square kilometers of forest were lost over that period, a decrease of 30.6 percent over the previous 12 months (Brazil tracks deforestation over the same August-July period every year). Deforestation in the Cerrado savanna region also declined by around 26 percent to some 8174 square kilometers, its lowest level since 2020. The decreases reflect the success that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government has had in limiting the rampant deforestation that took place under his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.
COLOMBIA
The Colombian government and the National Liberation Army (ELN) rebel group agreed on Thursday to restart peace talks with a new round in Venezuela opening on November 19. President Gustavo Petro’s administration suspended peace talks back in September, after an ELN attack on a military outpost that killed three soldiers. The two sides had allowed their ceasefire to lapse the previous month after ELN resumed its practice of kidnapping for ransom over the government’s objection. A new ceasefire will definitely be on the agenda in this next round—though ELN will likely demand some sort of compensation if it is to stop kidnapping, given how much it relies on ransoms as a revenue stream.
UNITED STATES
Finally, Drop Site’s Murtaza Hussein reports on what appears to be Donald Trump’s first foreign policy staffing decision:
Brian Hook, a hawkish fixture of the first Donald Trump administration who formerly served under George W. Bush, is reportedly getting the call to start staffing the State Department for a new Trump term. Hook, known as a major Iran hawk who helped lead the “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions, sabotage, and assassinations that characterized Trump’s approach to Tehran, has been appointed to help oversee the formation of a new foreign policy team, according to reports from Politico and CNN.
Hook served as U.S. Special Representative for Iran and advisor to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during the last two years of Trump’s presidency, which saw the killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and expansion of crushing sanctions intended to spur regime change in Iran. That approach ultimately failed to collapse the Iranian government, or compel it to reduce its support for its network of armed proxies in the region. Instead, it wound up escalating the hostility between the two countries while Iran ramped up its nuclear enrichment following Trump’s withdrawal from the Obama-era nuclear deal.
In addition to his Iran portfolio and work on the Abraham Accords—the set of agreements spearheaded by Jared Kushner that aimed to “normalize” Israel’s relationships with the Arab world at the expense of the Palestinians—Hook was also the head of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff at the time the department was producing outlandish documents calling for the Trump administration to help orchestrate an “Islamic reformation.”
I’m of two minds on this. As that excerpt amply demonstrates, Hook’s views are a mixture of idiotic and abhorrent, so on that basis the fact that he was apparently the first name to fall out of Trump’s Rolodex is not great. On the other hand, he did not exactly demonstrate much competence during Trump’s first term, so if you’re concerned that second term Trump is going to be more of the same but more effective then it may be somewhat comforting to see that he appears to be getting the old gang of boobs back together. Hook’s worldview also doesn’t entirely coincide with Trump’s, particularly with respect to Russia, so his time in the upper echelon of the administration may be relatively brief.
There's a great book about Tenskwatama called "The Shawnee Prophet" by R. David Edmunds. Highly recommended!