Weekend long read

1) At the JCPA Dan Diker and Khaled Abu Toameh discuss ‘Mahmoud Abbas’ Strategy of Selective Compliance’.

“On May 19, 2020, Mahmoud Abbas, head of the PLO and Chairman of the Palestinian Authority, announced that “He, the PLO, and the State of Palestine” are absolved of the agreements and the understandings with Israel and the United States including on security matters. […]

Abbas’ public announcement abandoning signed agreements with Israel under the Oslo Accords is neither an unprecedented nor isolated event. He has made similar statements in the past. […]

The PA president’s undiplomatic rhetoric and his recurring attacks on Israel and the United States disregarded accepted diplomatic practice. But more significantly, his statements, threats, and actions reflect a broader strategy of selective compliance with agreements that Abbas and former PLO and PA Chairman Yasser Arafat operationalized since signing the first of the Oslo Accords with Israel in September 1993. Both Palestinian leaders either complied or violated the internationally guaranteed Oslo Accords according to personal or political expediency.”

2) Jonathan Spyer takes a look at ‘A New Alliance’.

“Ankara, Islamabad and Kuala Lumpur, with Qatar as an additional partner, today constitute an emergent power nexus, built around a common orientation toward a conservative, Sunni political Islam.  This nexus is united as much by common enmities as by common affections. Its enemies are India, Israel and (at the rhetorical level) the Christian west.

Its rivals within the diplomacy of the Islamic world, meanwhile, are Saudi Arabia, which has traditionally dominated the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the main pan-Islamic diplomatic body, and the UAE.”

3) At the INSS David Siman-Tov and Shmuel Even analyse ‘A New Level in the Cyber War between Israel and Iran’.

“In cyber warfare, an attack on essential civilian infrastructure is considered a serious attack. According to media reports, Iran attacked Israel’s water infrastructure, and Israel responded with a cyberattack against infrastructure at the Iranian port in Bandar Abbas. While these were not the first attacks between the two countries, they illustrate that the conflict theater includes essential civilian infrastructure. Israel has so far managed to deal with cyberattacks against civilian infrastructure without suffering much damage, but it may become more vulnerable as the cyber arms race accelerates and Iran gains more sophisticated capabilities.”

4) Jonny Gould brings a podcast interview with the commander of Operation Brothers  

““Operation Brothers” was a mission to spirit thousands of Ethiopian Jews out of their remote highland villages to walk hundreds of miles to the hell of a Sudanese refugee camp, whereupon they would begin a perilous exodus to Israel.

Some Jews were given passports and papers and flown out of Khartoum Airport, a difficult and dangerous process in itself.

But thousands of others were transported hundreds more miles to the Sudanese coast under cover of a plan-sight Red Sea diving resort which Dani and his Mossad agents ran as a genuine hotel while conducting their covert operations.

10% didn’t make it, dying on the exhausting journey.”

 

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