World roundup: February 22 2024
World roundup: February 22 2024
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Senegal, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
February 22, 1848: A large crowd gathers in downtown Paris to demonstrate its anger against French King Louis Philippe I and demand the resignation of his prime minister, François Pierre Guillaume Guizot. The following day, Guizot’s resignation was overshadowed when French soldiers fired on the crowd, massacring more than 50 of them and kicking off the French Revolution of 1848. The revolution toppled Louis Philippe and instituted the French Second Republic, which lasted until 1852 when its president, Louis Napoléon Bonaparte (AKA Napoleon III), declared himself emperor as his uncle had done in 1804. Louis Philippe was the last King of the French.
February 22, 1797: A small French military force comes ashore near the town of Fishguard in southern Wales, kicking off the Battle of (you guessed it) Fishguard. French General Lazare Hoche concocted this operation amid the collapse of his Irish expedition in support of the republican Society of United Irishmen that winter. It was supposed to be one of two French diversionary landings in Britain that would distract from a much larger French invasion of Ireland, but the other two landings were delayed so only the Fishguard incursion took place. A force of some 1400 French regulars and irregulars met immediate resistance from British reservists and local militias, while discipline broke down within the French irregular contingent. Two days later the French force surrendered, and this marks the last time to date that a foreign army attempted to invade the island of Britain.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The Israeli government is reportedly (according to Israeli media) sending negotiators to Paris to participate in another round of ceasefire talks. This suggests the talks have made some progress, as does the presence of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Cairo—he’s participating indirectly. The Biden administration is dispatching its top diplomat, CIA Director William Burns, to Paris on Friday to participate as well. It’s unclear what terms are being discussed at this point, but The Wall Street Journal on Thursday reported some unspecified softening in Hamas’s negotiating position and that seems to be what’s gotten everyone so excited. The Israeli military (IDF) is continuing to escalate its airstrikes on the southern Gazan city of Rafah ahead of an expected ground assault that is likely to be a civilian massacre and that only a ceasefire deal can forestall. The Biden administration has been trying to salvage negotiations that went off the rails earlier this month.
Elsewhere:
Palestinian gunmen opened fire on cars around the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim on Thursday, killing at least one person and wounding eight. Israeli police killed all three of the shooters.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that the US intelligence community has conducted its own assessment of the Israeli government’s allegations against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). It has concurred with the claim that a small number of UNRWA employees participated in the October 7 militant attacks but only with “low confidence,” which in this context means they’re essentially taking Israel’s word for it because they have no way to independently confirm or reject the claim. It can’t even go that far with the other Israeli claims, that some 10 percent of UNRWA’s staff have ties to Gazan militant groups and that UNRWA itself is working in collusion with Hamas. Suffice to say there’s nothing here that would support US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s assertion last month that the Israeli allegations are “highly, highly credible.” Perhaps US analysts could have come to a more conclusive assessment, but apparently the Israeli government has refused to provide them with the raw intelligence that fed the initial accusations.
What makes the above story particularly risible is that the Biden administration suspended US funding for UNRWA, and may make that suspension permanent, without any independent verification that the charges had any merit. The funding cutoff is threatening to shut the agency down in the middle of a humanitarian catastrophe. UNRWA is the primary relief agency in Gaza and even if the administration has some well-meaning plan in mind to redirect funding to some other aid organization—which I think we can assume it does not—there is no other organization that can pick up the slack under present circumstances.
+972 Magazine’s Ibtisam Mahdi examines the Israeli military’s systematic destruction of Gaza’s cultural heritage. It’s happening so quickly and in such a restricted media environment that it’s impossible to assess the extent of the devastation. While not as direct as simply killing everyone, this seems clearly to be part of a project to erase Gaza and its people from existence.
LEBANON
An IDF drone strike killed two Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon on Thursday, according to AFP. Hezbollah later confirmed their deaths and claimed that it fired “dozens” of rockets into Israel in response. There’s no indication they had any effect.
YEMEN
Houthi militants in northern Yemen had a busy day on Thursday, attacking a cargo ship in the Red Sea after firing at least half a dozen drones at vessels in the area. The US Navy said its ships downed all the drones, but two Houthi missiles struck the cargo ship and caused “minor injuries and damage” according to US Central Command. The ship appears to be continuing on course. The Houthis also fired at least one ballistic missile toward the Israeli port of Eilat that was intercepted by Israeli air defenses.
ASIA
CHINA
In a rare piece of good news, the China Wildlife Conservation Association announced on Thursday that it’s reached agreement with zoos in San Diego and Madrid to send them giant pandas. The agency also says it is negotiating similar deals with zoos in Vienna and in Washington, DC. Beijing has been steadily allowing its panda loan agreements with Western zoos to lapse in recent years in what has appeared to be an act of New Cold War-related irritation. There are currently four pandas in US zoos today, all in Atlanta, but San Diego should now be receiving a new pair later this year. Whatever your thoughts on zoos, these deals do offer benefits for panda conservation in China and more importantly suggest that relations between the US and China might be thawing out a bit.
NORTH KOREA
Earlier this week, the Conflict Armament Research group released a report based on its examination of debris from a North Korean-made ballistic missile used by the Russian military in Ukraine. It found a significant number of recently made, US- and European-manufactured components among the wreckage, which strongly suggests that international sanctions against Pyongyang are not working at all as intended. At least some of those components appear to be specialized enough that they can’t simply be bought on the open market, which means they might be traceable back to the firms that sold them to the North Koreans. If that’s the case, this report could generate new candidates for the US government’s blacklist and potentially even for prosecution.
AFRICA
LIBYA
There’s no indication yet that the various militias that have been patrolling parts of Tripoli are beginning to vacate the city, in line with the agreement Libyan Interior Minister Imad Trabelsi announced on Wednesday. According to Trabelsi the groups have committed to pulling out of the capital by the end of Ramadan, which means sometime around April 10. Whether they intend to make a genuine withdrawal or simply try to drop out of public view remains to be seen.
SENEGAL
Senegalese President Macky Sall affirmed on Thursday that his term will end on April 2, as originally scheduled before his ill-fated attempt earlier this month to postpone the presidential election that had been scheduled for February 25. The Senegalese Constitutional Council declared that idea unconstitutional last week, and Sall on Friday pledged to abide by that ruling and hold the election “as soon as possible.” He did not, however, set a new date and he didn’t do so on Thursday either, except to seemingly set April 2 as an unofficial deadline. Sall says he intends to meet with various “political and social actors,” including the candidates, on Monday and Tuesday to try to reach consensus on a date. Sall also suggested on Thursday that he might be open to releasing imprisoned opposition politicians, including one-time presidential contender Ousmane Sonko.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
With the second anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine almost upon us, the Biden administration is reportedly planning to blacklist more than 500 individuals and entities on Friday in what will be its largest single expansion of sanctions against Russia to date. Some of these may be directly connected to the death of Alexei Navalny last week rather than to the war, but it’s hard to know without more detail. The UK government on Thursday blacklisted over 50 individuals and entities to commemorate the anniversary.
UKRAINE
The Russian military on Thursday claimed that its forces had seized the village of Pobieda in Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast. Ukrainian officials say their forces are still contesting it. The Russians are also claiming other territorial advances in Donetsk but as usual very little of what’s happening on the front line can be verified.
Meanwhile, the AP reports on deliberations around finding more soldiers for the depleted Ukrainian military:
The lack of soldiers isn’t Ukraine’s only predicament — it is also desperate for Western military aid, which has been harder to come by as the war drags on. But mobilizing enough soldiers is a problem only Ukraine can solve.
To replenish its ranks, the Ukrainian government is struggling to find a balance between coercion and persuasion.
The parliament is considering legislation that would increase the potential pool of recruits by about 400,000, in part by lowering the enlistment age from 27 to 25. But the proposal is highly unpopular, forcing elected officials to grapple with questions that cut to the heart of nationhood: Can they convince enough citizens to sacrifice their lives? And, if not, are they willing to accept the alternative?
Most Ukrainian brigades are fighting at 75 percent or less of their prewar sizes, and the average age of a Ukrainian soldier is in the 40s which means physically they are more prone to breaking down while in service. Lowering the enlistment age could help but it also risks losing an entire generation to this war.
HUNGARY
Hungary’s ruling Fidesz Party has tapped the head of the country’s Constitutional Court, Tamás Sulyok, to be the country’s next president. He’s replacing Katalin Novák, who resigned earlier this month amid revelations that she pardoned a man linked to a child sexual abuse scandal. Fallout from that story is continuing to reverberate through Hungarian politics and has been causing problems for Fidesz leader and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, though there’s no indication yet that he’s in an serious political jeopardy.
AMERICAS
UNITED STATES
Finally, at Foreign Affairs, Amnesty International Secretary-General Agnès Callamard argues that the massacre in Gaza, and US support for it, “signals the end of the rules-based order”:
After more than four months of conflict, Israel’s campaign of retaliation against Hamas has been characterized by a pattern of war crimes and violations of international law. Israel’s stated justification for its war in Gaza is the elimination of Hamas, which is responsible for the horrific crimes committed during its October 7 attack on Israel: 1,139 people, mostly Israeli civilians, killed; thousands more wounded; a yet unknown number of women and girls subjected to sexual violence; and 240 people taken hostage, many of whom are still held by Hamas.
In response, Israel forcibly displaced Palestinians, imposing conditions that have left hundreds of thousands without basic human necessities. It has carried out indiscriminate, disproportionate, and direct attacks on civilians and “civilian objects,” such as schools and hospitals. Some 28,000 Palestinians have been killed, the majority of them women and children. Vast sections of Gaza have been pulverized; a fifth of its infrastructure and most of its homes are now damaged or destroyed, leaving the region largely uninhabitable. Israel imposed a prolonged blockade, denying Palestinians adequate food, potable water, fuel, Internet access, shelter, and medical care: action amounting to collective punishment. It is detaining Gazans in inhumane and degrading conditions, and Israel admits that some of those detained have already died. Meanwhile, in the West Bank, violence against Palestinians by Israeli forces and settlers has increased markedly.
The United States and many Western countries have supported Israel, providing military assistance, opposing calls for a cease-fire at the United Nations, stopping funding of the UN Relief and Works Agency serving Palestinian refugees, and rejecting South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), even as the carnage continued to unfold.
Today’s diplomatic complicity in the catastrophic human rights and humanitarian crisis in Gaza is the culmination of years of erosion of the international rule of law and global human rights system. Such disintegration began in earnest after 9/11, when the United States embarked on its “war on terror,” a campaign that normalized the idea that everything is permissible in the pursuit of “terrorists.” To prosecute its war in Gaza, Israel borrows ethos, strategy, and tactics from that framework, doing so with the support of the United States.
It is as if the grave moral lessons of the Holocaust, of World War II, have been all but forgotten, and with them, the very core of the decades-old “Never Again” principle: its absolute universality, the notion that it protects us all or none of us. This disintegration, so apparent in the destruction of Gaza and the West’s response to it, signals the end of the rules-based order and the start of a new era.
Callamard is certainly not the first person to come to this position, but her status as the head of arguably the most prominent Western human rights NGO gives her comments as regards the “rules-based order” particular heft.