World roundup: February 23 2024

Stories from Israel-Palestine, India, Sudan, and elsewhere

TODAY IN HISTORY

February 23, 1455: This is traditionally the date cited for the publication of the “Gutenberg Bible,” one of the first books mass printed in Europe using moveable metal type and certainly the most famous. Johannes Gutenberg’s work helped usher in the age of printing, in which books could be produced at such a volume that they became affordable and available to a wider segment of the public and printing works in vernacular languages (rather than just Latin) became more viable.

February 23, 1966: Leaders of the Syrian regional branch of the Baʿath Party pull off a coup d’etat, ousting the old guard party leadership. The incident precipitated the splintering of the previously pan-Arab Baʿathist movement into Syrian and Iraqi national parties.

INTERNATIONAL

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) adjusted its money-laundering “grey list” on Friday. The big news is that the United Arab Emirates, which the FATF added to the list in 2022, has been removed along with Barbados, Gibraltar, and Uganda. Congratulations to all of them I guess, but the UAE was probably the most prominent country on the list in terms of its position in the global financial system. The FATF added Kenya and Namibia to the list, putting the total number of countries on it at 21. Being placed on the “grey list” represents a warning that a country’s anti-money laundering systems are not up to FATF standards. It doesn’t carry any automatic penalty—unlike placement on the agency’s blacklist of money laundering violators—but it can have a chilling effect on things like foreign investment.

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented his “day after” plan for Gaza to his security cabinet late Thursday, and it is apparently everything you might have expected. It calls for full, indefinite Israeli military access inside the territory—effectively reimposing direct occupation—along with the creation of a buffer zone on the Gazan side of the Israeli security barrier. Netanyahu’s plan rejects both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority as potential governing bodies in Gaza, opting instead for the creation of ad hoc local administrations that would be staffed by friendly Palestinians. It’s unclear where the Israeli government would find Palestinians willing to participate in such an arrangement, but assuming they could these localized governments would most likely be used to carve Gaza up into powerless, isolated cantons in much the same way that Israeli settlements have carved up the West Bank.