When Israel destroys Hamas, the Abraham Accords will grow stronger - opinion

The Abraham Accords were created on the basis of peace through strength. The accords countries therefore see an interest in maintaining ties with Israel, as it fights these shared enemies.

By DAVID AARONSON - NOVEMBER 4, 2023

Will the Abraham Accords survive Swords of Iron?

The terrorist attacks launched by Hamas on October 7 were the deadliest on Jews since the Holocaust and on Americans since 9/11.

The Hamas terrorists beheaded babies and burned their parents alive. They destroyed entire villages and homes. They murdered more than 1,400 Israelis, injured more than 5,000, and kidnapped well over 200.

The UAE and Bahrain immediately issued condemnations of Hamas. Kosovo’s president and prime minister both published statements in solidarity with Israel. Sudan has not reacted publicly thus far, while Morocco issued a condemnation of the attacks on civilians.

In a recent address UAE Minister of State for International Cooperation Reem Al Hashimy condemned Hamas for their heinous and barbaric attacks and reiterated that the hostages be released immediately without any preconditions.?

UAE Ambassador to the United Nations Lana Zaki Nusseibeh also affirmed her country’s commitment to the Abraham Accords and even backtracked from blaming Israel for the explosion of the Al Ahli hospital in Gaza, publicly admitting that it needed further investigation.?

Ines Demiri, the chief of mission at Kosovo’s embassy in Jerusalem visited the Israeli communities on the Gaza border to show solidarity with the victims.?

While Morocco has been sympathetic to the Palestinians in most of their public statements, in Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita’s most recent speech in Cairo, he stopped short of placing any specific blame on Israel.?

To ensure this relationship endures, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rightfully reaffirmed Israel’s recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara this past week.

There are numerous ongoing joint economic ventures between Abraham Accords countries in the areas of water, energy, food, healthcare, and more. These collaborations greatly benefit the people of the region.?

Yet despite the war, both the UAE minister of state for foreign trade and the Bahraini finance minister continue to publicly reaffirm the importance of the Abraham Accords and their economic benefits in trade and investment. Moroccan media outlets have urged the same.?

Granted, the public statements coming from Abraham Accords countries during this war aren’t always perfect. In fact, some of the statements were disappointing and fell short of their expectations, particularly after Israel launched its ground invasion of Gaza.

Yet the recent improvement in the tone of these statements, and the willingness of the Abraham Accords countries to condemn Hamas, is something that was unimaginable until just a few years ago. It’s important to read between the lines of these statements and applaud every step of progress made, no matter how small.

IT IS also important to acknowledge the elephant in the room. In this war, Israel and the Abraham Accords countries share the same threat from the Islamic Republic of Iran. Hamas, which attacks Israel, is armed and funded by Iran. The Houthis, which attack the UAE and Bahrain, are armed and funded by Iran. The Polisario Front, which attacks Morocco, is armed and funded by Iran.

Over the course of this week alone, the Houthis fired a UAV across the Red Sea, the Polisario fired missiles at Morocco, all while Hamas continues firing on Israel.

Too often people don’t connect the dots. We must pay attention to the man behind the curtain. These terrorist organizations are branches of the same poisonous Iranian tree.

Without Iran, these attacks would not have been possible to begin with. Iran must face harsh consequences and not be allowed to escape responsibility.

We must also acknowledge the destabilizing actions of other countries in the region that harbor Hamas leaders and finance their terror networks, such as Qatar, Turkey, and Algeria. These countries must also be held accountable.

The Abraham Accords were created on the basis of peace through strength. The accords countries therefore see an interest in maintaining ties with Israel, as it fights these shared enemies.

And when Israel indeed destroys Hamas, as it has rightfully announced its intention to do, it will send a huge message of deterrence to other Iran-backed terrorist organizations that threaten the Gulf and Africa.?

To those who believe an all-out war on Hamas will damage the Abraham Accords: There is nothing our Abraham Accords partners would be more excited to see than the destruction and elimination of one of Iran’s terror proxies. It would be much more damaging to the Abraham Accords if Israel was forced into a ceasefire and wasn’t able to destroy Hamas.?

A victorious Israel means a stronger, safer, and more stable environment for Abraham Accords countries. This is not only the formula for maintaining the Abraham Accords, but for expanding them to new countries.

As was the case in May 2021, I am confident that the Abraham Accords will survive this war too.?

And when Israel eliminates Hamas to win this war, the Abraham Accords will emerge stronger than ever before.

The writer is deputy director for Israel at the Abraham Accords Peace Institute. He previously served as senior adviser to Israel’s regional cooperation minister during the signing of the Abraham Accords and the launch of Operation Guardian of the Walls.

When Israel destroys Hamas, the Abraham Accords will grow stronger - The Jerusalem Post ( jpost.com )

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Can climate change save Arab-Israeli normalization efforts? - opinion

Recognizing the mutual economic gains to be made from accelerating cooperation on clean energy and cleaning up fossil fuels could help to spur on Arab-Israeli normalization.

By AYNUR BASHIROVA - NOVEMBER 4, 2023

Israelis are still reeling from the unprecedented, devastating October 7 terrorist atrocities committed by Hamas, on what has been called the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Amid fears of a prolonged military response that might escalate into a wider conflict – with potential to destabilize the entire region – hopes for Arab-Israeli normalization appear to have collapsed.?

Saudi Arabia, which was in the midst of talks with Israel about the prospects of normalization, has frozen talks entirely, and many fear the repercussions of Iran’s call for Arab nations to cooperate in confronting Israel.

Yet this is all the more reason to recall that the driving impetus behind Arab-Israeli normalization is, despite geopolitical challenges, alive and well. The reported potential financial benefits to signatory countries are astronomical.?

According to a study conducted by the RAND Corp, the combined potential benefits of bilateral trade agreements to signatories come close to USD 70 billion. The change in GDP, in the case of the Arab signatories, has the potential to grow up to 0.8%. And this is only with the current four signatories. The same study predicts $1 trillion in new economic activity over a decade if the deal expands to 10 nations.?

Continuing to look beyond the countries with which Israel normalized relations within the context of the Abraham Accords last year, Israel launched a series of pioneering solar, wind, and storage projects across seven Arab countries – Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, the UAE, Jordan, Morocco, and Egypt.?

Furthermore, just this summer, Israeli Solar Edge formed a rare joint venture with a Saudi Arabian private firm Ajlan & Bros Holding, one of the largest private sector conglomerates in the Middle East and North Africa region, to develop renewable energy infrastructure in the Kingdom.?

The impact of normalization has not only been felt internationally. The Israeli Energy Ministry announced a plan to invest $8 million to ramp up renewable energy projects in Arab municipalities inside Israel. Some have connected Israel’s efforts toward tackling inequality in Israeli society with the Accords, with Israel having a strategic interest in improving the state of Israeli Arabs.

Israel can salvage Arab normalization at COP28

HAMAS’S ATTACK has struck a blow against this quiet progress, but all is not lost. Although negotiations over normalization are frozen for now, Israel will be involved in painstaking diplomatic discussions with its Arab neighbors, including Saudi Arabia, in the UAE – the host of the pivotal UN COP28 climate summit, which gets underway at the end of this month.

The policy agenda being promoted by the UAE’s COP28 presidency is one of the most ambitious to date, and despite being hosted by one of the world’s most significant oil-producing countries, is putting the spotlight on accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels.?

Aside from technical issues, the summit is expected to focus on many of the overlooked issues, such as the impact of the green transition on the global south where the infrastructure does not quite yet exist, to simply turn off fossil fuels. The summit will also be focusing on some concrete plans that the UAE has to promote the green transition, including $300 billion in projects expected to be executed this decade alongside a seven-year goal of tripling renewable energy capacity.?

ON THE subject of Israeli-Arab cooperation, the summit will provide an unprecedented opportunity for Israel and the Arab world to double down on the progress made on clean energy so far. COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber’s calls to triple renewable energy capacity and decarbonize the oil industry will resonate with both Israel and Arab states which still share common concerns: They are all threatened by the disproportionately severe impacts of climate change across the Middle East; they are all oil and gas producers; and they are all seeking to diversify their energy supply and accelerate their energy transitions to the innovative technologies of the future.

With desert being over half of Israel’s terrain, the potential for solar energy is huge. While solar energy constitutes less than 10% of the country’s energy output, the Israeli government is determined to ramp up the county’s production of solar energy to 30% of Israel’s energy output by 2030, with the aim for the end of 2025 to increase Israel’s solar energy output to 20%, on the way to realizing the potential 2 billion euro gain this development can provide to the economy yearly.

Each of our countries has massive solar potential. Together, our potential is even higher. It’s in each of our interests to find a way to work together in unleashing it for our mutual benefit. At COP28, recognizing the mutual economic gains to be made from accelerating cooperation on clean energy and cleaning up fossil fuels, could spur on the kind of regional understanding that not only underpins a viable new climate deal – but helps to spur on Arab-Israeli normalization against all odds.

The writer is a political scientist specializing in Israel, defense, energy, and geopolitics of Europe and the Middle East. Her doctoral thesis was on Israel’s partnership with Azerbaijan.

Can climate change save Arab-Israeli normalization efforts? - opinion - The Jerusalem Post ( jpost.com )

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Gaza should be occupied by the US, UK, France, Germany - opinion

The US, UK, France, and Germany should be the bodies that shall bear the responsibility of governing the Gaza Strip and stabilizing it so there can be elections after a decade.

By RUTH WASSERMAN LANDE - NOVEMBER 4, 2023

The starting point of the “day after” the war should find Hamas in a state of surrender. That is, we will have to see the complete disarmament of the organization and all its supporters. Anything less than that could be considered a return to “the day before”.

If we take into account that Hamas’s movement encompasses about 30,000-50,000 active armed terrorists in the Gaza Strip , than the entire population of Gaza, numbering about 2.7 million Palestinians, potentially includes many more terrorists. This is for the simple reason that Hamas, similar to the Muslim Brotherhood and other such factions, is not only a movement but an embodiment of an ideology, one which has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the Palestinian public over the years.

It is true that not all Palestinians in Gaza support Hamas. However, this does not mean that those Palestinians who do not are necessarily interested in living in peace side by side with Israel. Their teaching materials, their sermons in the mosques, and their content in the media all comprise of extreme incitement, leaving little room for independent thinking when it comes to Israel and/or Jews. While other Arab countries have begun the process of making the content of the textbooks more inclusive and tolerant, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Jordan have remained steadfast in their refusal to change even a single word in this regard.?

The United Nations funds the Palestinians through the UNRWA agency , while the USA supports them via USAID, the European Union, Canada and more. In theory, they all fund the Palestinians’s welfare, but in practice, these countries may also be supporting incitement.?

Following the events of October 7 , the European Union has made the decision to stop funding the Palestinian Authority, starting in 2024, owing to its realization of the aforementioned reality. Yet there is still a lot of work to be done in order to make sure that what will nurture the minds of young Palestinians from now on will be completely different from the contents they have been exposed to thus far, so as to make it possible to build a saner future in this region. So, any solution that is adopted in the Gaza Strip the day after the war may become an abject failure if it is not backed up by a fundamental change mentioned above.

At the same time, there must no longer be a situation where only a fence or a wall separates Israeli citizens from residents of the Gaza Strip. In the new reality, a security strip should be established, similar to the one that exists on the Egyptian side of its common border with Gaza. Any movement in the area in question should be dealt with severely. No sovereign country can accept the presence of hostile elements on its very borders, so it is unreasonable to expect of the State of Israel to put up with such an extreme reality.

After the subjugation of Hamas, it should not be assumed that Israel will remain in the Strip for too long. It is still important to remember that Hamas’s ideology does not only threaten Israel. This is a threat to the entire enlightened world and therefore it is appropriate to examine the handling of the stabilization of the Gaza Strip on the day after from a broad prism and not simply a local one.

Who will rule Gaza temporarily after Hamas is deposed?

It is also clear that in post war Gaza, a new temporary sovereign must be instated, which is neither Hamas nor the radical Sunni Islamist leadership, Fatah al-Islam, as suggested by some senior officials in the international arena. First, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has already stated that he is not interested in bearing responsibility for the Strip. It is difficult to blame him, considering that only in 2006, following the withdrawal of the IDF from the Gaza Strip and Hamas’s rise to power in democratic elections, the movement’s activists lynched their Palestinian colleagues belonging to Fatah. Second, there is much incitement in the West Bank too making it also not suitable to govern Gaza in a peaceful manner alongside Israel - at least for the time being. Without eradicating this hatred, the West Bank cannot possibly be expected to lead as a stable, peaceful entity alongside Israel. Third, given Iran’s systematic and very thorough efforts to root its extreme ideology into the young people in the West Bank as well, Hamas has also grown there in recent years, alongside the Islamic Jihad and other extreme movements that are simply fed up with Fatah’s perceived corrupt leadership in the West Bank, making this entire area also unsafe and not devoid of extreme ideological influence.

Hence, Gaza should be divided into several parts, with each part being managed by a different international body, which is not the UN.?

The management should not only be security oriented, but also civilian and logistical, similar to the way in which Germany was managed after World War II. Because the crimes perpetrated by Hamas terrorists against civilians on October 7 are not fundamentally different from those carried out by the Nazis during World War II. If the IDF had not stopped them, their scope would have been much greater than it was on that Black Sabbath.

Therefore, we and the world should treat the management of the Gaza Strip with a degree of severity that is consistent with the one adopted following World War II. In this wise, the USA, Great Britain, France and Germany should be the bodies which shall bear responsibility of governing the Strip. Only following the stabilization thereof, and after a decade, elections for an inherent Palestinian leadership should be able to take place there. During this time, no Palestinian workers should enter Israeli territory. The aforementioned four countries must bring about the dismantling of the refugee camps that have been maintained as such for 75 years, despite being under Palestinian autonomous rule. The US, UK, France and Germany can work together to create sustainable sources of income and to diversify employment opportunities, as well as establish housing solutions for the residents of the Gaza Strip.

Although it is very difficult to think of a solution to the Gaza Strip without solving the entire Palestinian issue, at this stage - and until the Gaza Strip is stabilized - it is not possible to connect these two geographical entities, both in terms of leadership and from a practical-geographic point of view. Therefore, at this stage, I will not deal with providing a holistic response to the broad Palestinian issue.

In any scenario however, managing Gaza on the day after will set an example for the treatment of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Palestinians in the West Bank, and the whole question of coexistence between Arabs and Jews within the State of Israel. Strengthening internal security in the country and strict, systematic and equal enforcement for all citizens of the country will be a condition for this, including the uncompromising collection of all illegal weapons in Israel and the eradication of crime and violence in the Arab Israeli society. It should no longer be possible to ignore the fact that an uncontrolled criminal infrastructure within Israel’s borders constitutes a fertile ground for the promotion of foreign interests by Iran and terrorist entities.

The writer is a former MK from the Blue and White party, a former adviser to president Shimon Peres, and past deputy ambassador in Cairo.

Gaza should be occupied by the US, UK, France, Germany - opinion - The Jerusalem Post ( jpost.com )

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How billions of dollars for Hamas paved way for Oct. 7

Israel "can economically choke Hamas and Hezbollah, but it needs to take immediate action."

By SHIRIT AVITAN COHEN - (November 5, 2023 / JNS)

Various government entities in Israel—the Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories unit, the IDF, and the Israel Security Agency, better known as the Shin Bet, saw the blood money trail.

But they were blinded by the idea that Hamas had become an established governmental entity, and as such it had much to lose, and so despite the accumulation of its military capabilities and power, it would avoid the use of them for murder on a grand scale.

Economic analysts of terrorist organizations with whom we spoke in recent days all expressed deep frustration and anger at this. For years they have been looking at the numbers and the funding channels, and providing warnings regarding the capital being used to fund Hamas’s militarization.

The figures were there for all to see. In this case, seeing is not believing, but rather “disbelieving.”

The annual budget available to the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip amounts to $2 billion-$2.5 billion. This is the estimate by Yitzhak Gal, an established expert on Middle East economic issues as a whole and the Palestinian economy in particular, who has engaged in comprehensive consulting work regarding the funding of the Hamas regime.

This is an enormous amount compared with the economy in the Gaza Strip. It constitutes 65-70% of the Strip’s GDP.

For the sake of comparison, Gal states, the Palestinian Authority’s budget for Judea and Samaria is slightly over $3 billion, constituting a mere 20% of the GDP of that area. And for the sake of further comparison, in Israel, the state budget accounts for about 25% of GDP.

Following the massacre in the Gaza border communities, in a document published only a week ago by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the current estimated value of Hamas’s assets is put at hundreds of millions of dollars.

Not for the benefit of the civilians

Dr. Udi Levi, a senior analyst at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS), an expert on economic warfare and the person who headed Israel’s Counter Terrorism and Proliferation Finance Bureau (which was closed down in 2016), explains: “In the Gaza Strip a portion of falafel costs NIS 5-7 [$1.27-$1.78], the unemployment rate is at 50%—and so it was clear that the colossal budget run by Hamas was diverted for the purpose of paying workers who built the tunnels, for the procurement of weapons, for training and employing its fighters, and certainly not for the benefit of the civilians there.

“We saw all the trucks bringing in metals to the Gaza Strip over the years, and all this just to buy a little peace and quiet. I was the one who screamed out against this conception of allowing the money to flow into the Gaza Strip, I said that Hamas should have been undermined by facilitating its economic collapse, but none of this worked.

“But it is still not too late. Even now, by adopting a series of measures that will not harm even one soldier, the Israeli government can economically choke Hamas and Hezbollah, but it needs to take immediate action,” Levi said.

In 2007, Hamas seized power in the Gaza Strip from the Palestinian Authority, and since then it gained support from the majority of the residents there. Over the course of time, it established a bank, recruited officials and became a Palestinian government, second in size to that of the P.A. in Judea and Samaria.

“Hamas succeeded in building an enormous budget for itself, by maneuvering both the P.A. and Israel into enabling the constant flow of large budgets from legitimate external sources, covering all the government’s civilian expenditure in the Gaza Strip, while considerable amounts were diverted from these funds to finance the Hamas military systems (mainly military personnel and dual-use products),” added Levi.

“In parallel, they developed indigenous sources of revenue, under their exclusive control, available to fully serve the needs of military buildup and to maintain Hamas’s overall governmental apparatus in the Gaza Strip, which amounts to several thousand senior managers.”

According to Levi, this basic structure of a “double budget” has existed in the Gaza Strip for 15 years now.

Gal, Levi, and a former senior governmental official describe the key money channels through which funds were pumped into the Gaza Strip for a decade and a half.

The first one—the P.A. budget, the second— external economic aid, which in the past came from the international community and in recent years has mainly relied on Qatar. The third—the Hamas Charity Coalition, an entire setup of donations that generates millions and which is mainly based in Turkey. The fourth—the local collection of taxes by Hamas, and the fifth—the Iranian funding provided to counter Israel, which covers the entire areas of Judea and Samaria as well as the Gaza Strip.

The funding routes are known to the Shin Bet, the Mossad and the IDF, and all the experts with whom we spoke recommend taking immediate action to undermine the organization’s economic infrastructure and ensure its collapse.

They stress, and this is crucially important, that while military activity will be able to do away with Hamas’s power, the organization’s financial reserves and its senior figures who reside abroad will in the future be able to rehabilitate this ISIS-like terrorist organization within a relatively short time.

A war on Hamas’s economy

Only a strategic war on Hamas’s economy will prevent it from being rebuilt and again posing a threat to Israel’s citizens. In the hope that some of our senior officials have a peek at this article, here are a number of recommended courses of action.

According to Levi, it is imperative to carry out extensive arrests of the money changers operating in the service of Hamas in Judea and Samaria, and to “treat them as terrorists for all intents and purposes. And in the Gaza Strip—even during the process of rebuilding the damage— not to allow the growth of a new bank.”

Gal also recommends stopping P.A. funds from pouring into the Gaza Strip, and as far as Qatar is concerned, both Levi and Gal strongly recommend sidelining this small, terrorism-financing emirate.

If a foreign financier is required in the Gaza Strip once hostilities have died down, Levi recommends bringing in the Saudis to assume this role, while Gal recommends restoring the P.A. to the Gaza Strip.

“As long as the administration in Gaza is not subordinated to the P.A. in Ramallah, Israel should ensure that no budgets are transferred and should also prevent the entry of imports apart from essential products,” Gal said.

How billions of dollars for Hamas paved way for Oct. 7 - JNS.org

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