World roundup: July 23 2024
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Bangladesh, France, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
July 23, 1319: A Knights Hospitaller-led fleet defeats and virtually annihilates a smaller fleet from the Anatolian Beylik of Aydin in a battle just off the coast of the Aegean island of Chios. The Aydinids were one of several Turkic principalities that emerged in Anatolia amid the collapse of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum in the latter part of the 13th century. They controlled the port city of Smyrna (modern Izmir), and were able to take advantage of that location, and the Byzantine Empire’s decision to disband its navy in the 1280s, to establish a robust piracy operation in the eastern Mediterranean. The Knights Hospitaller, who seized the island of Rhodes from the Byzantines in 1310, began defending Christian shipping from Turkish pirates. They were supported by ships from Chios, which was under Genoese control at this time. The outcome of Chios was little more than an inconvenience for the Aydinids, whose pirate racket thrived until a pair of Christian expeditions called the “Smyrniote crusades” took part of Smyrna from them in 1351. But the Christian victory did help formulate a model for later (and much larger) naval campaigns against the Ottomans.
July 23, 1952: Egypt’s 23 July Revolution
INTERNATIONAL
This past Sunday was the hottest day ever recorded, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. The average planetary temperature that day topped out at 17.09 degrees Celsius (62.76 degrees Fahrenheit), breaking a record set—you guessed it—last year. Prior to last year the previous record average temperature high for a single day was 16.8 degrees Celsius, set in 2016. According to Copernicus, the planet has surpassed that temperature 57 times over the past year.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The Wall Street Journal reports on the continued threat of disease in Gaza:
The Israeli military’s declaration that it had found remnants of poliovirus in sewage in the Gaza Strip was a reminder that nine months of war have unleashed threats beyond bombs and bullets.
The virus has been all but eradicated in most of the world, but Gaza’s shattered public hygiene facilities have created an opening for it and other pathogens. Health workers, including at the World Health Organization, worry the interlinked problems of untreated sewage, shortages of clean water, insufficient food, compromised medical facilities and a lack of the basics for personal hygiene are exacerbating each other, creating the risk that diseases could break out.
Chief among aid groups’ concerns are waterborne infections, including hepatitis A and cholera, which spread in the type of poorly sanitized, dense conditions many Palestinians have been forced into in Gaza. There aren’t any active cases of polio, thanks to high levels of vaccination before the war, an Israeli official said following the military’s declaration on Sunday. But local health authorities say more than 1.7 million cases of various infectious diseases have been recorded since the war began.
“I’m most amazed we haven’t had an outbreak,” Scott Anderson, the director of Gaza affairs for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, one of the organizations charged with managing the humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip, said of the risk of epidemics. Anderson said raw sewage flows daily in the streets near where Unrwa has set up its wartime operations in central Gaza and that he himself was infected with E. coli.
Elsewhere:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in Washington DC this week, where on Wednesday he’ll deliver an address to a joint session of the US Congress that will most likely serve as a campaign speech for both himself and his preferred US presidential candidate, Donald Trump. He’s scheduled to meet with Joe Biden on Thursday and Trump on Friday. At some point he’ll likely also meet with the presumptive Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, though she will not attend Netanyahu’s congressional address.
The now-lame duck Biden is insisting that he’ll bring an end to the massacre in Gaza before the end of his term. Having failed to do so thus far it’s unclear how he expects to do so now, when his status as outgoing president diminishes his influence. Thursday’s meeting with Netanyahu will presumably involve Biden urging Netanyahu to acquiesce to a ceasefire (and, I would guess, Netanyahu telling Biden to go piss up a rope).
Axios’s Barak Ravid, citing “two Israeli officials,” reports that representatives from Israel and the US attended a meeting in Abu Dhabi last week hosted by UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed to discuss “day after” plans for Gaza. The Emiratis are apparently saying that they’re willing to participate in an international occupation force in the territory, but they’re signaling that they expect the Palestinian Authority (or at least a “reformed” PA) to be placed in charge of Gaza and that Israel will agree to revive the vaunted “two-state solution.” Netanyahu sounds like he essentially wants to turn Gaza over to the UAE, particularly with respect to the costs for cleaning up the catastrophic mess he’s made there, but he’s refusing to consider either a PA role or any movement toward a Palestinian state. Essentially he wants the Emiratis to take the territory off his hands in exchange for nothing other than maybe a pat on the back.
Along those lines, officials from Hamas and the PA’s ruling Fatah party held another “unity” summit in China this week, announcing on Tuesday that they’d agreed on a tentative plan to jointly administer Gaza that they’re calling the “Beijing declaration.” Given how many times Hamas and Fatah have started down the road toward reconciliation only to stop short there’s no point dwelling on this new effort unless it actually comes to fruition. That said, the announcement was serious enough to draw a public rebuke from the Israeli government, and it does indicate that the Chinese government could have a role to play in Palestinian matters moving forward.
An Israeli military raid in the West Bank’s Tulkarm refugee camp killed at least five people on Tuesday, including a civilian woman and child along with a Hamas “commander.” Another Israeli raid near Hebron left at least two more people dead. Meanwhile, the monitoring group Peace Now says it has uncovered evidence that the Israeli government allocated some $20.5 million back in December to fund ostensibly illegal settler outposts in the West Bank with the goal of nurturing them into full blown settlements. Once they become large enough the government will legalize them, advancing the goal of de facto West Bank annexation.
+972 Magazine has published an interview with Palestinian lawyer Diana Buttu regarding last week’s International Court of Justice ruling deeming the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories to be an illegal annexation. She argues that in spite of the fact that it can’t be enforced, the ruling should concern Israeli leaders in that it affirms a fundamental Palestinian right to the land even in the absence of the Palestinian “state” that the Israeli government keeps blocking. It rather unambiguously sets Israel on par with apartheid South Africa and undercuts any Israeli pretense to a “legal” occupation. That said, she’s pessimistic that the Palestinian Authority as currently constructed can capitalize on the ruling’s implications.
YEMEN
While warning about the potential for escalation following recent clashes between the Houthi movement and Israel, UN Yemen envoy Hans Grundberg told the UN Security Council on Tuesday that the Houthis and the nominal Yemeni government “have agreed on a path to de-escalate a cycle of measures and countermeasures which had sought to tighten their grip on the banking and transport sectors.” The split between Houthi-run northern Yemen and the rest of the country has deepened to the point where the two sides are operating their own banking systems and maintaining their own currencies, policies that are detrimental to the Yemeni economy and could in theory make the current division of the country permanent. They’re also hotly disputing control of the national air carrier, Yemenia Airways. Details on the “path” are unclear, and there’s plenty of reason to be skeptical that they’ll actually make progress in terms of implementing it.
ASIA
BANGLADESH
The Bangladeshi government on Tuesday said it would abide by a weekend Supreme Court ruling that slashed its civil service quota program to cover just 7 percent of public sector jobs. Student groups that organized protests against the quota system last week—protests that were met with a violent response from police and pro-government mobs—are still demanding that the government roll back measures it took to try to quell the unrest, including a national curfew, an internet shutdown, and the closure of universities. Authorities did ease the curfew on Tuesday, and while that’s not completely responsive to the student demands the main group behind the protests, Students Against Discrimination, said that it is extending its 48 hour protest pause for at least another 48 hours. According to AFP at least 174 people were killed and authorities arrested over 2500 people during the protests, and a number of participants are accusing police of abducting and torturing them.
At Foreign Policy, writer Salil Tripathi looks at the roots of opposition to the quota system—and toward the Bangladeshi government more generally:
The quota system was set up more than five decades ago by then-Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, [current PM Sheikh] Hasina’s father, to ensure jobs for veterans of the liberation war as well as people from underrepresented districts. Today, descendants of freedom fighters make up only a small portion of Bangladesh’s population—around 0.12 percent to 0.2 percent, according to the Bangladeshi newspaper Prothom Alo.
The [ruling] Awami League played a major role in the liberation struggle, and the system has disproportionately benefited the small number of people associated with the party. As Naveeda Khan, an anthropologist at Johns Hopkins University, recently wrote, the “quota for freedom fighters was undoubtedly for [Hasina’s] own chosen people.”
Resentment against the quotas has long been brewing, particularly as the country faces high rates of youth unemployment and inflation. (The quotas also reserve jobs for minorities and disabled people, although these measures are not as controversial.) Bangladesh has made impressive economic strides, with an average GDP growth of 6.6 percent over the past decade. Poverty declined from 11.8 percent in 2010 to 5 percent in 2022, and the country is expected to graduate from its “least developed country” status at the United Nations in 2026. However, job growth has slowed. According to the World Bank, more than a quarter of jobseekers are between the ages of 15 and 29, and 1 in 8 young people is jobless.
After student demonstrations in 2018, the quota system was abolished, but the High Court’s decision to reinstate it in June sparked the most recent wave of protests.
NORTH KOREA
North Korea floated another batch of trash balloons toward South Korea on Tuesday. I hesitate to even mention these incidents anymore because they’re becoming routine and there doesn’t seem to be much risk that they’ll spark any sort of escalation, but this was the tenth trash balloon spectacle since late May so I guess we should probably mark the milestone.
AFRICA
SUDAN
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday announced that a new round of Sudanese ceasefire talks will take place in Switzerland on August 14, provided the combatants agree to participate. One of those combatants, the Rapid Support Forces group, has already signaled that it plans to send representatives to the talks, but there’s been no word yet from the Sudanese military. The Saudi government will co-host with the US, with the UN, the African Union, Egypt, and the UAE sending observers.
NIGER
The Nigerien military says that its forces engaged in a battle with jihadist militants on Monday in southwestern Niger’s Tillabéri region, near the country’s border with Burkina Faso. At least 15 Nigerien soldiers were killed in the clash along with at least 21 insurgents. Another three soldiers are missing and 16 were wounded badly enough to require hospitalization.
KENYA
Anti-government protests in Nairobi on Thursday turned violent when demonstrators clashed with counter-protesters from what the AP called “an emerging pro-government group.” Police fired tear gas to disperse the anti-government group while apparently doing nothing about the pro-government group (of course).
At Foreign Affairs, Michelle Gavin of the Council on Foreign Relations explains the bind into which the Biden administration has placed itself by embracing Kenyan President William Ruto so tightly:
In June, Kenyans took to the streets to oppose government proposals to hike taxes. In doing so, they were also airing their bitter disappointment with President William Ruto, who swept into power two years ago after a tight electoral victory. Ruto had promised to lower the cost of living and increase job opportunities for young Kenyans. Instead, Kenyans watched as he pivoted outward, positioning himself as a mediator in regional conflicts and giving major speeches at international forums—and allying with the United States.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration made a show of embracing Ruto, too, inviting him for a rare state visit in May. U.S. and Kenyan officials stressed the fact that Ruto was the first African leader to receive such a welcome since Ghana’s President John Kufuor in 2008 and the first Kenyan leader to make a state visit to Washington in more than two decades. The U.S. government announced that it would designate Kenya as the United States’ first major non-NATO ally in sub-Saharan Africa, a designation that puts it in company with the likes of Australia and Japan. Yet just one month later, images of smoke rose from Kenya’s parliament, as popular protests against the government turned violent. Over 30 people were killed, many at the hands of police, prompting the U.S. embassy and other diplomatic missions to express shock and call for restraint.
This uprising—and the Kenyan government’s doomed, start-and-stop authoritarian response—should jolt U.S. officials into a different gear. The protests against a leader supported so prominently by Washington have now resulted in over 50 deaths and hundreds of injuries, and clearly pose a dilemma for the United States. Washington now has two options: it can pull back, confirming the view of critics who have called the recent U.S. efforts to build a partnership with Ruto shallow and ill informed. Or it can double down on helping the Kenyan government succeed in meeting the demands of its citizens. It must do the latter. The U.S.-Kenyan relationship has a long and deep history, and as the Horn of Africa grows increasingly unstable and international institutions grow increasingly dysfunctional, Kenya could prove to be a vital American partner in avoiding worst-case scenarios and helping reform the region’s institutional architecture. But Washington must act to provide the country some real economic relief, conditioned on anticorruption and human rights benchmarks, to show that the United States is serious about Kenya, not just enamored of Ruto.
EUROPE
UKRAINE
The Russian military said on Tuesday that its forces had captured Ivano-Dariivka, a village in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast. From AFP’s description it sounds like even referring to this place as a “village” is being generous, but the seizure does indicate that the Russians are still slowly gaining territory.
FRANCE
The New Popular Front (NFP) alliance, the left-wing electoral coalition that emerged from France’s July 7 parliamentary election as the largest bloc in a hung parliament, finally coalesced around a joint candidate for prime minister on Tuesday, tapping economist Lucie Castets for the job. While her selection indicates that the various parties within the NFP have managed to set aside their own disagreements it does not mean that Castets is actually going to get the job. NFP may be the largest legislative bloc, but at 193 seats in the 577 seat National Assembly it is well short of a majority. Moreover, French prime ministers must be nominated by the president, and Emmanuel Macron has already rejected Castets. Macron is still hoping to cobble together a functional parliamentary majority out of more center-left elements of the NFP, his own centrist Ensemble coalition, and elements of the center-right Republican party. If he can do that then he’ll undoubtedly make his own PM choice.
AMERICAS
UNITED STATES
Finally, Spencer Ackerman digs into a recent speech from Kamala Harris’s national security adviser, Philip Gordon, that suggests she’s not going to diverge all that much from Joe Biden when it comes to the Middle East:
Addressing "the path and the vision" for a way out of the war, Gordon called "the normalization arrangement" Biden has been pursuing with Saudi Arabia "the big prize" for Israel that "could consummate this vision of an Israel that is secure and integrated in the region." Longtime readers will know I'm very skeptical of this proposal, and if it happens at all, it may turn out to be a U.S.-Saudi deal that gives the Saudis a path to a nuclear weapon. Also significant: While both the Americans and the Saudis have attempted, post-Oct. 7, to retcon the proposal to have always included some nebulous path to Palestinian statehood, Gordon said merely that "there needs to be a Palestinian component to that vision."
The International Criminal Court moving toward arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant? "We’ve been very clear from the start that we thought that was a mistake," in Gordon's view. Expanded recognition of Palestinian statehood? "We just don’t think it helps Palestinians, or anyone else, to recognize the state of Palestine." Questioned by Elise Labott, Gordon said unilateral recognition doesn't lead "to the actual outcome we want to see, which is a Palestinian state, but one that lives securely side-by-side with Israel." That of course makes Palestinian freedom contingent on Israel, exactly as it's been since 1948, and last week, the Israeli Knesset decisively rejected a two-state solution. While the Knesset vote happened several weeks after Gordon's speech, no one who has followed this issue needed the vote to clarify Israeli rejectionism.