World roundup: September 18 2024

Stories from Saudi Arabia, Japan, Burkina Faso, and elsewhere

TODAY IN HISTORY

September 18, 324: In a battle near the city of Chrysopolis in Anatolia, the armies of Roman emperors Constantine and Licinius meet in what proves to be the final battle of the Roman Tetrarchy’s multiple civil wars. Constantine, as we know, won an overwhelming victory and then had Licinius executed in 325. Constantine thus made himself the first sole emperor of Rome since Diocletian elevated Maximian to the status of Augustus in the west in 286.

September 18, 1810: The Government Assembly of the Kingdom of Chile, or the “First Government Junta,” takes power in the colony by pledging allegiance to the deposed King Ferdinand VII of Spain and rejecting Napoleon’s imposition of his brother, Joseph, on the Spanish throne, thus kicking off the Chilean War of Independence. Though it was supposed to be temporary, the junta continued fighting after Ferdinand’s restoration and didn’t stop fighting until Chile became an independent nation in the 1820s. Commemorated as Chilean Independence Day.

September 18, 1947: The National Security Act goes into effect, drastically reshaping the US national security bureaucracy. The previously cabinet-level Department of War (renamed the Department of the Army) and Department of the Navy were subsumed into a new cabinet-level “Department of Defense.” The US Air Force was split from the Army into its own military branch, also under the new Defense Department. Outside the Pentagon, the act created the National Security Council within the White House and the Central Intelligence Agency, the first US peacetime intelligence agency. And we all lived happily ever after.

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

At his newsletter, Séamus Malekafzali discusses the deeper impulses behind the Israeli military’s (IDF) recent campaign in the northern West Bank:

These areas in the northern West Bank were once part of what the British during the Mandate period called the “Triangle of Terror”, a cradle of resistance to colonial rule centered around Jenin, Tulkarm and Nablus. Through the Nakba, the beginning of the occupation of the West Bank, and both intifadas, these places have retained and increased their reputation as a thorn in Israel’s side, a hotbed of opposition to Israeli occupation and settlement, opposition which contributed to Ariel Sharon’s decision to disengage from the northern West Bank in the mid-2000s, just as that same phenomenon in the Gaza Strip contributed to the decision to disengage from there during that same period.

The loss of the settlements in the Strip, known as Gush Katif, has been an eternal grievance for the Israeli far-right ever since. Many soldiers involved in the current war against Gaza have been more than happy to carry that desire for vengeance back into the Strip, considering it their return to land that always belonged to them, that was stolen from them in 2005. Videos have streamed out of the area for months now of IDF soldiers proudly declaring their hopes for revenge against the Arab populace, to destroy any evidence of Arab existence in the land, and to reestablish the settlements on the pulverized ruins.

While the disengagement from the northern West Bank, deemed “northern Samaria” in official Israeli parlance, may not be as oft-referred, it is still very much a grievance, one that Israeli government ministers, those that Netanyahu relies on to stay in power, are just as eager to address.

While there’s still some ambiguity about the Israeli endgame in Gaza there is none when it comes to the West Bank—the goal is annexation, full stop, and that requires ethnic cleansing. So while this operation appears to be winding down (the IDF has pulled out of Jenin, for example), more like it will be forthcoming.