The Weekly Lift - May 16, 2024

This week's selection of headlines and articles*:

International Relations: The Visit Of Greek Prime Minister Mitsotakis to Turkey Confirms Thawing Of Relations Between The Two Countries

Le Monde (France) reports, "Who would have thought that Recep Tayyip Erdogan would one day call the Greek Prime Minister "my dear Kyriakos"? Only two years ago, the Turkish president said: "For me, a person named Mitsotakis no longer exists from now on.

Times seem to have changed, and the head of the Greek government welcomed, during his visit to Ankara on Monday, May 13, the "positive path" taken by the two countries. Recalling that this was the fourth meeting in ten months with Mr. Erdogan, the Prime Minister added that this rapprochement, "in difficult times for peace and in a context of destabilization of the region, was necessary".

Before this meeting in the Turkish capital, the two heads of state assaulted kindness. Mr. Mitsotakis has multiplied, in the Turkish daily Milliyet, the references to the progress of "their] permanent dialogue". Mr. Erdogan, in the Greek newspaper Kathimerini, recalled the "objective of strengthening [their] friendship by solving problems" and "addressing all issues together".

At the presidential palace, the tête-à-tête lasted two hours before a press conference was held during which the two leaders tried to highlight the thaw of relations between their countries, but did not manage to mask several topics of tension. The Turkish president reminded journalists that he did not have the same definition of Hamas as his Greek counterpart. "I do not consider it a terrorist group. I see it as a group of people trying to protect their own land, "said Mr. Erdogan, revealing that Turkey has so far been careting for "more than a thousand Hamas members" in its hospitals.

The exchange even went up slightly when it came to the conversion into a mosque, since May 6, of the Byzantine church of Saint-Sauveur-in-Chora in Istanbul, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Ignoring the official "discontent" of Athens, the Turkish Head of State insisted that "the Kariye mosque [its Turkish name] in its new identity remains open to all".

"As I told the Prime Minister, we opened our Kariye mosque to worship and visits after careful restoration work in accordance with the decision we made in 2020," said Mr. Erdogan. "I had the opportunity to discuss with Mr. Erdogan of the conversion of the church of Saint-Sauveur-in-Chora, and I expressed my dissatisfaction to him, argued in return Mr. Mistotakis. It is at least very important to preserve the unique cultural value of this monument, so that it can remain accessible to all visitors. ?

Recep Tayyip Erdogan had ordered, in August 2020, the conversion of this 5th century Byzantine church, a month after the reopening to Muslim worship of the former Hagia Sophia Basilica. The first faithful were welcomed there on May 6, the day after Orthodox Easter, while the two Christian frescoes in the prayer room were masked by a curtain. This reopening, a week before the visit of the Greek Head of State, was criticized by several commentators and interpreted as a concession on the part of President Erdogan to the most Islamist fringes of the country, after his defeat at the municipal elections on March 31.

As a sign of the times, the two leaders have not stopped, apart from these two dissonant sequences, to welcome the process of normalization of their relations."We believe that strengthening the spirit of cooperation between Turkey and Greece will be beneficial to both countries and the region," repeated Mr. Erdogan by insisting on an "extremely productive, sincere and constructive meeting".

"Today, we have shown that next to our established disagreements, we can write a new page," added Mr. Mitsotakis. The two officials agreed to increase their bilateral trade by nearly $6 billion (€5.56 billion) "to $10 billion", according to Mr. Erdogan.

Since the signing in December of a "declaration of friendship and good neighbourly relationship", the Greek-Turkish "positive agenda" has begun to be put in place, with the issuance of "special visas" to Turkish tourists wishing to go to ten Aegean islands near the Turkish coast (including Lesbos, Samos and Rhodes). This measure was acclaimed. From the first month of entry into force, in April, the number of Turkish visitors tripled compared to the same period, in 2023.

"In the essential field of immigration, the collaboration of our police and coast guards has yielded results and will be further strengthened," also welcomed Mr. Mitsotakis, who repeated that migration flows are declining and that the subject of immigration is no longer a problem on which the extreme right could surf before the European elections.

For several months, almost no violations of Greek airspace by Turkish aircraft have been reported. The two leaders also promised to help each other in the event of a natural disaster and to develop academic and scientific exchanges.

However, it must be noted that the most thorny issues have not been addressed, such as the delimitation of maritime exploitation areas. On public radio ERT, Christos Rozakis, former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, considered that if Greece "maintains its position of not discussing sovereignty issues, then it will find itself at an impasse". And the specialist added: "If the problems of maritime areas are not addressed soon, the risk of Turkey changing its posture is not to be excluded."

Geopolitics: U.N. Assembly Approves Resolution Granting Palestinians New Rights And Reviving U.N. Membership Bid

The Los Angeles Times (US) reports, "The U.N. General Assembly voted by a wide margin on Friday to grant new “rights and privileges” to Palestinians and called on the Security Council to favorably reconsider their request to become the 194th member of the United Nations.

The 193-member world body approved the Arab- and Palestinian-sponsored resolution by a vote of 143 to 9 with 25 abstentions. The United States voted against it, along with Israel, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Papua New Guinea.

While Friday’s resolution gives Palestinians some new rights and privileges, it reaffirms that it remains a nonmember observer state without full U.N. membership and without the right to vote in the General Assembly.

U.S. Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood said Friday that for the United States to support Palestinian statehood, direct negotiations must guarantee Israel’s security and future as a democratic Jewish state and that Palestinians can live in peace in a state of their own.

The United States vetoed a widely backed council resolution on April 18 that would have paved the way for full U.N. membership, a goal the Palestinians have long sought and that Israel has worked to prevent.

Under the U.N. Charter, prospective members of the United Nations must be “peace-loving,” and the Security Council must recommend their admission to the General Assembly for final approval. Palestinians were granted U.N. nonmember observer status in 2012.

The United States considers Friday’s resolution an attempt to get around the charter’s provisions, Wood reiterated Thursday. Unlike resolutions in the Security Council, there are no vetoes in the 193-member General Assembly. Friday’s resolution required a two-thirds majority of members voting and got more than the 118-vote minimum.

U.S. allies supported the resolution, including France, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Australia, Estonia and Norway. European countries were divided. The resolution “determines” that a Palestinian state is qualified for membership — dropping the original language that in the General Assembly’s judgment it is “a peace-loving state.” It therefore recommends that the Security Council reconsider its request “favorably.”

The renewed push for full Palestinian membership in the U.N. comes as the war in Gaza has put the more than 75-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict at center stage.

The latest war began with the Hamas militant group’s surprise attack in southern Israel in October, in which it killed about 1,200 people and took about 250 others hostage. At numerous council and assembly meetings, the humanitarian crisis facing Palestinians in Gaza and the killing of more than 34,800 people in the territory, according to Gaza health officials, have generated outrage from many countries.

A General Assembly resolution on Oct. 27 calling for a humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza was approved 120 to 14 with 45 abstentions. Before Friday’s vote, Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian U.N. ambassador, told the assembly in an emotional speech that “no words can capture what such loss and trauma signifies for Palestinians, their families, communities and for our nation as a whole.”

He said Palestinians in Gaza “have been pushed to the very edge of the strip, to the very brink of life,” with Israel besieging Rafah. Mansour accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of preparing “to kill thousands to ensure his political survival” and aiming to destroy the Palestinian people.

Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Gilad Erdan, vehemently opposed the resolution, accusing U.N. member nations of not mentioning Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and seeking “to reward modern-day Nazis with rights and privileges.”

He said if an election were held today, Hamas would win, and warned U.N. members that they were “about to grant privileges and rights to the future terror state of Hamas.” He held up a photo of Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the Hamas attack on Israel, saying a terrorist would be a future Palestinian leader.

Erdan also accused the assembly of trampling on the U.N. Charter, putting two pages that said “U.N. Charter” in a small shredder he held up. The original draft of the assembly resolution was changed significantly to address concerns not only by the U.S. but also Russia and China, according to three Western diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity because negotiations were private.

The first draft would have conferred on a Palestinian state “the rights and privileges necessary to ensure its full and effective participation” in the assembly’s sessions and U.N. conferences “on equal footing with member states.” It also made no reference to whether the Palestinians could vote in the General Assembly.

According to the diplomats, Russia and China, which are strong supporters of the Palestinians’ U.N. membership, were concerned that granting the list of rights and privileges detailed in an annex to the resolution could set a precedent for other would-be U.N. members — with Russia concerned about Kosovo and China about Taiwan.

Under long-standing legislation by Congress, the United States is required to cut off funding to United Nations agencies that give full membership to a Palestinian state — which could mean a cutoff in dues and voluntary contributions to the United Nations from its largest contributor.

The final draft that was voted on dropped the language that would put a Palestinian state “on equal footing with member states.” And to address Chinese and Russian concerns, it would decide “on an exceptional basis and without setting a precedent” to adopt the rights and privileges in the annex.

The draft also added a provision in the annex on the issue of voting, stating categorically: “The state of Palestine, in its capacity as an observer state, does not have the right to vote in the General Assembly or to put forward its candidature to United Nations organs.”

The resolution gives the Palestinians the right to speak on all issues, not just those related to the Middle East; the right to propose agenda items and reply in debates; and the right to be elected as officers in the assembly’s main committees. It also allows Palestinians the right to participate in U.N. and international conferences convened by the United Nations — without the right to vote.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas first delivered the authority’s application for U.N. membership in 2011. It failed because the Palestinians didn’t get the required minimum support of nine of the Security Council’s 15 members.

They went to the General Assembly and succeeded by more than a two-thirds majority in having their status raised from a U.N. observer to a nonmember observer state.

That opened the door for the Palestinian territories to join U.N. and other international organizations, including the International Criminal Court. In the Security Council vote April 18, the Palestinians got much more support for full U.N. membership. The vote was 12 in favor, with Britain and Switzerland abstaining, and the United States voting no and vetoing the resolution.

On Oct. 27, weeks after the Hamas attack, a General Assembly resolution calling for a humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza was approved 120 to 14 with 45 abstentions."

Peace Building: Activists Hold A Ceremony Reflecting On Both Israeli And Palestinian Losses

The New York Times (US) reports, "With Israel’s most sacrosanct day of remembrance as a backdrop, peace activists in Israel broadcast their annual Joint Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day Ceremony on Sunday night, with parallel events in London, New York and Los Angeles.

The ceremony, organized by Combatants for Peace and the Parents Circle — Families Forum, two peace-building organizations, is unusual in that it tries to recognize not only Israeli grief, but also the toll of Palestinian suffering over the decades. This year’s event was especially poignant given that it was the first since the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and comes amid the devastation caused by the war in Gaza.

This year the ceremony, which has been held annually since 2006, was prerecorded to avoid the possibility of disruption by protesters. In previous years it attracted sharp criticism and a legal challenge in Israel, and on Sunday organizers said just before the ceremony was set to be broadcast that its website had been hacked. As a result, the organizers said it was not possible to watch it on YouTube as planned, and viewers instead watched on Facebook.

The ceremony, an annual focus for peace activists in Israel, featured speeches, songs, a poem about peace and a video that showed children in Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank talking about the effect of war. One child wished “for everyone who died to come back to life.” Palestinians in the West Bank did not participate in person, given that Israel stopped allowing many Palestinians to work in Israel after the Oct. 7 attacks led by Hamas, which the Israeli authorities say killed around 1,200 people. There were also no direct contributions by speakers in Gaza.

“For many Israelis it seems provocative,” Yuval Rahamim said of the ceremony in an interview by telephone from Tel Aviv. Mr. Rahamim, co-director of the Parents Circle — Families Forum, an Israeli-Palestinian organization of families who have lost immediate relatives in the conflict, said that his father had been killed in the 1967 Arab–Israeli War. He acknowledged that many Israelis would find the event jarring, given the scale of suffering on Oct. 7, but he said that also gave it more significance.

“Many people have woken up to the reality that this conflict cannot go on,” he said, referring to the decades of violence. “People are willing to stand up.” His sentiment was echoed by Magen Inon, 41, whose parents were killed on Oct. 7 and who spoke in person at the start of the screening in London, which was held at a Jewish community center.

He said that he did not want what had happened to his family to be used as an argument for further war. “We felt as if our personal pain is being hijacked by the national cause,” said Mr. Inon, who now works as a peace activist.

Many Israelis have argued the country is still bound by a sense of national shock and loss over Oct. 7. and are stunned by international criticism of the war in Gaza, which they mostly see as justified.

More than 35,000 people have been killed in Gaza during Israeli’s military campaign to defeat Hamas, health officials there say, and almost everyone there has been displaced from their homes amid a hunger crisis that aid workers say has been largely caused by Israeli restrictions on aid deliveries to the enclave.

But the ceremony, which was screened at more than 200 venues in Israel, spoke to the diversity and complexity of opinion within Israeli society about the issue. Several speakers discussed their hope for an end to generations of bloodshed, and for peace.

Among the most stark contributions came from Palestinian speakers who described conditions in Gaza. Ghadir Hani read a contribution from a woman in Gaza, whose name was given only as Najla, describing how she had lost 20 family members in the war, including her brother, a father of two, who she said had been killed while going to look for food for his parents.

“They killed him while walking in the street though posing no threat whatsoever,” Ms. Hani read. “The death machine is still ready to kill,” she added. “But I know that on the other side there are many people who believe in peace.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has repeatedly said that Israel’s war is with Hamas, rather than the people of Gaza, and that his government regrets civilian casualties.

Another contributor, Ahmed Helou, a member of Combatants for Peace, which gathers people who have fought either for Israel or for Palestinian groups, suggested that the ferocity of Israel’s campaign had forced him to reassess the personal cost of his commitment to peace.

“The Israeli army is still killing shamelessly. Everyone in Gaza is a terrorist in their eyes,” said Mr. Helou, as he recounted a litany of death his family had endured in Gaza. “Does causing unsurmountable pain promise peace for the Israelis?”

Israel’s Memorial Day began at sundown on Sunday and ceremonies will be held through Monday afternoon."

Politics: South African Activist Is Trying To Save Democracy In The World’s Most Unequal Country

The Globe and Mail (Canada) reports, "Zackie Achmat, one of South Africa’s most renowned activists, once helped to save millions of lives by leading the fight for access to HIV medicine. Now he’s trying to save democracy itself.

Thirty years after the country’s first democratic election, a growing number of South Africans have become deeply alienated from traditional politics and parties. In the last national election in 2019, for the first time ever, more than half of potential voters did not even bother to cast ballots.

As a new election approaches on May 29, with the electorate increasingly fragmented and disillusioned, Mr. Achmat is trying something radically new: he is running as an independent candidate. If he wins, he will seek to overhaul the political system in a country where poverty and inequality still run deep.

Mr. Achmat spent his youth as an underground member of the African National Congress, often jailed for his fight against apartheid. In 1976, at the age of 14, when students were boycotting schools in protest against apartheid, he burned down his own school – and was arrested by the police, the first of seven arrests he endured.

Later, in 1998, he co-founded the Treatment Action Campaign, which led a historic court case that forced the government to provide life-saving HIV medicine. He abandoned the ANC in the early 2000s during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, when the government was still reluctant to supply medicine to the millions who could not afford it.

Since 1994, when apartheid ended, the ANC has won every election – but its vote totals have steadily eroded as voters punish it for its widespread corruption and economic mismanagement.

As the ANC declines, no other political party has managed to capture the enthusiasm of the voters. Many are limited to a narrow ethnic or ideological base.

About 70 per cent of South Africans are dissatisfied with the way democracy works in their country, opinion polls show. Almost 80 per cent say they cannot trust their leaders, compared to just 20 per cent two decades ago. Many voters have simply dropped out of elections.

Meanwhile, the party system has splintered, reflecting a divided country. In the election this month, an astonishing 70 parties will be on the ballots – including 31 new parties. Perhaps more significantly, 11 independent candidates are running. A court ruling in December removed some of the long-standing obstacles to their candidacies, making it easier for them to qualify for the ballot.

Polls suggest that the ANC could fail to win a majority of votes this time, for the first time since it took power. This would curb its powers, forcing it to negotiate with other parties to seek coalition partners in order to maintain its parliamentary majority.

Mr. Achmat wants to go beyond the politics of coalitions. He argues that the entire party system is breeding discontent. Under the South African electoral system, each party has a list of candidates that it can appoint to Parliament, depending on its share of the vote.

But voters have no control over these lists. Appointees to key posts – such as provincial premier – are not disclosed until after the election. MPs have no links to specific constituencies, and every MP’s job is dependent on the whims of the party’s bosses.

If he can win a parliamentary seat, Mr. Achmat aims to challenge all this. He wants to be accountable to the people, not a party. He wants the links between MP and voter to be as direct as possible. And he believes that an MP has vast amounts of potential power – rarely exercised – in parliamentary committees and other structures.

“The deep disaffection with the ANC in its traditional communities has opened up the contestation space,” he told The Globe and Mail in an interview. “The disaffection with traditional parties is phenomenal. We need to bring people back into politics, and that’s exactly why I’m standing. I’m bringing in people who’ve given up on voting, and people who won’t vote for a political party.”

More than half of South Africa’s population were born after the first democratic election, he noted. For younger voters, apartheid is in the distant past, and the ANC’s fight for liberation is old history. Their daily reality is the spread of state corruption and economic stagnation, with South Africa’s economy still ranked by most measures as the most unequal in the world.

Hobbled by energy shortages and the breakdown of state infrastructure, the South African economy has grown slower than the country’s population for more than a decade, causing a decline in per-capita income and a rise in unemployment.

“The only reality that younger people see is the downward trajectory of the state, and the inability of the other political parties to do anything about it,” Mr. Achmat said.

“The deep inequality in the country is driving the collapse of the state and the disaffection of the people, and it drives corruption. You have a class of people who wish to become wealthy very quickly, and the state has become the thing to milk. You have a state that has become kleptocratic across most of the country.”

In his battle to get into parliament, Mr. Achmat might have the best chance of any independent candidate in this election. He is running in his home region, Western Cape province, where he is revered as an activist hero. More than 3,000 volunteers have mobilized to help his campaign.

But while the rules for independent candidates have loosened, the system is still tilted against them. On the election ballot, Mr. Achmat is obliged to seek votes across the entire Western Cape province, competing against 32 political parties, rather than running in a specific constituency. He estimates that he’ll need to gain as many as 85,000 votes to enter parliament, while a candidate for a political party might only need half as much support.

Because of this imbalance, his campaign needs to raise much more money than a candidate for a political party. So far he has raised about 10 million rand (about $740,000), and he estimates that he still needs another 2 million rand.

On the campaign trail, he witnesses the dangers of the growing political alienation among ordinary voters. Many parties are now seeking votes with populist schemes: deporting foreigners, abolishing the constitution, or restoring the death penalty.

“The lower the voter turnout, the greater the danger that the country will split and divide itself and turn in on itself, and the greater the risk of authoritarian solutions,” he said. “We have one task ahead of us, and that is to fix the state. I’m willing to work with any political party that agrees to fix the state.”

Human Rights: Belgian Sex Workers To Get Health insurance, Pensions And Maternity Leave In World First

The Telegraph (UK) reports, "Belgium has become the first country in the world to approve a labour law on employment contracts for sex workers.

Under the law, if a prostitute refuses a client more than 10 times over six months, a pimp can trigger an intervention by a government mediator but cannot sack the employee.

It also entitles the sex worker to health insurance, pensions, unemployment and family benefits, holidays and maternity leave. “This law is a world first. I cannot stress enough how important this is,”? Daan Bauwens, a spokesman for the UTSOPI, the union for sex workers in Belgium, said.

“With this model, Belgium is really demonstrating that it aims to protect sex workers, regardless of any moral judgements about the profession people may have,” he told The Brussels Times. He added: “We hope that this can lead to a reversal of the recent trend of criminalising clients in Europe.?

“We hope that other countries will copy this text, as they did on topics such as same-sex marriage, abortion, euthanasia and transgender rights.” The law makes it legal to give prostitutes employment contracts, after Belgium became the first country in Europe to decriminalise self-employed sex work in 2022.

It bestows certain rights on the worker and conditions on their employer. These include the right to refuse a client or a sexual act, as well as the right to interrupt a sexual act at any time without fear of dismissal or punishment.

Sex workers are also entitled to carry out a sexual act how they wish and to refuse to sit behind Amsterdam-style windows, which are also used in Belgium, or to advertise if their safety is at risk.

Invoking any of these rights more than 10 times in half a year can lead to the government mediation service being called by the worker or employer. Sex workers can also end their contract at any time with no notice period and do not lose their right to unemployment benefits when terminating their employment.

Workers’ anonymity will be protected because the contracts will be provided under the same heading as those given to hospitality workers in the restaurant and hotel sector. This is intended to ensure they can apply for other jobs without fear of discrimination.

The law does not cover pornographic actors, strippers or webcam performers. Pimps must have a registered office in Belgium and apply for approval before they can offer the contracts.??

Approval will be withheld if they have convictions for crimes including sexual assault, murder, extortion, abuse of sex workers or voyeurism. They must provide the sex worker with an alarm button, which must be in the room where the sexual services are provided or be portable if the worker is travelling to the client.

The employer must also ensure sex workers have access to someone in charge of ensuring their safety, and that unions and support organisations have access to the brothels at all times. Other countries, such as New Zealand, Germany and the Netherlands, recognised sex work before Belgium but have never set up a comparable legal framework.

The Belgian parliament approved the law, following years of lobbying from sex workers, on Friday, with 93 votes in favour, 33 abstentions and no votes against. The next step will be the finalisation of three decrees focusing on the practicalities of the procedure for recognising employers, regulations on the size of rooms, workplace hygiene and the maximum number of sex workers per room, and the government mediation service."

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