Free Alaa Abd el-Fattah from Egyptian prison: symbol of the 2011 youth revolution, he has been on a hunger strike for 200 days.

COP27 climate change conference: The struggle against climate change cannot be separated from the struggle for human rights.

Protest vigil at the Egyptian embassy in Tel Aviv | Thursday November 10, 5:00 p.m

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COP27, the global climate summit, opened on November 6 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, where Egyptian President el-Sisi is hosting over 100 heads of state. While world leaders are coming to Egypt to discuss the planet’s future, tens of thousands of political activists are languishing in Egyptian prisons.

The most prominent of them, Alaa Abd el-Fattah, expanded his hunger strike on COP27’s opening day and is now also refraining from water. There is a danger that within a few days this will lead to his death, since for more than 200 days he has been on a partial hunger strike (consuming only 100 calories a day), which has greatly weakened his body.

Alaa Abd el-Fattah was one of the most prominent activists in the 2011 Arab Spring. Since then he has been imprisoned repeatedly, continuing his activism in the intervals and publishing a book of articles in English. In 2019 he was released after serving five years for participating in a non-violent demonstration in Cairo. Within a few months he was again arrested and tried a second time in a military court, this time together with his lawyer, Muhammad Albaker, and activist Mohamed (Oxygen) Ibrahim. Alaa was sentenced to 5 years in prison and his two friends to 4 years. The charge: publishing false information on the Internet.

Alaa Abd el-Fattah has British as well as Egyptian citizenship. Despite this, Wadi Natrun prison authorities prevent him from receiving a visit from British Embassy representatives. In addition, and contrary to Egyptian law, the authorities deny him access to newspapers, books and radio.

A large-scale international public campaign has been going on for the past few months, in parallel to the hunger strike started by Alaa in April. Alaa’s mother and sisters, who are also central activists in Egypt’s democratic movement, are leading the call to release him from prison. Pressure is also being directed at the British government.

Public pressure has intensified ahead of the climate summit. Prominent personalities, including dozens of Nobel laureates for literature and science, as well as environmental and human rights organizations, called on the Egyptian regime to release Alaa and his friends ahead of the conference. These calls emphasize the fact that the struggles against climate change and for human rights cannot be separated, and that it is unfitting for the climate conference to be held on Egyptian soil while the country’s authorities are brutalizing a freedom fighter like Alaa Abd el-Fattah.

Khalid Abdalla, an Egyptian-British film actor who is active in the campaign to free Alaa, explained in an interview with the Sky News on November 5: “We are very concerned about the future of the earth and humanity in light of the climate crisis, but if all the heads of state cannot guarantee justice for Alaa Abd el-Fattah and the Egyptian prisoners of conscience, how will they manage to save  humanity?”

For more details and media interviews, contact Yoav Gal Tamir, spokesperson of the Daam Party: +972-50-7859475

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After more than 100 days of hunger strike in Egyptian prison, Alaa Abd al-Fattah is determined to continue struggling until his rights, and those of tens of thousands of political prisoners falsely imprisoned by al-Sisi’s regime, are recognized.  Israel maintains close cooperation with the dictatorial regime in Cairo, ignoring its shocking human rights record. Lapid and Bennett, like Netanyahu, are interested in cooperating with al-Sisi so that he will help them control the region and silence the Palestinians.

On Sunday, July 10, the new Israeli Prime Minister, Yair Lapid, had a phone conversation with Egyptian President Abd al Fattah al-Sisi. According to the report, the conversation dealt with the expected visit of US President Biden to the area, the Palestinian issue, and an investigation into the unknown fate of dozens of Egyptian commandos buried in Latrun in 1948.

Not on the agenda was the condition of Alaa Abd al-Fattah in Wadi a-Natrun prison, although the leaders were conversing on the 99th day of his hunger strike. The fate of Egypt’s prisoners of conscience is not an issue that interests anyone in the Israeli political system. In the eyes of the Israeli public, including the circles of Labor and Meretz, the Arab world is divided into lovers and haters of Israel. Accordingly, al-Sisi is considered a positive factor with whom one should maintain good relations. What dictators do at home vis-à-vis their political opponents, many of whom have no connection to terrorist and violent activity, is a matter of indifference here.

Although al-Sisi’s regime now appears to be stable, it is Alaa Abd al-Fattah and his comrades who represent the future of Egypt and indeed, the future of the entire region.

Alaa (41) is a leader of the young revolutionaries, a symbol of the generation that led the January 2011 revolution. Since then he has been in and out of prison for a decade. In 2013 he was arrested by the military government and imprisoned for 5 years for participating in an illegal demonstration. After being released in early 2019, he remained in his home for several months, until he was imprisoned again and sentenced to an additional five years on a fabricated charge of “spreading false information.”

For years he was held in the notorious Tora Prison south of Cairo, where he was denied access to books and newspapers. Contrary to Egyptian law and human rights conventions, the authorities also deny him the possibility to leave his cell for walking and sports, and visits of one person were allowed only every few weeks. Although he holds both British and Egyptian citizenship, Egyptian authorities prevent British embassy representatives from visiting him.

In response Alaa decided to commence an open hunger strike, demanding improved conditions.  The strike is carried out according to the method of Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, and includes consumption of 100 calories per day (the average daily consumption of an adult in a state of inactivity is 2,400 calories). Begun in early April this year, it has been going on for more than 100 days.

About a month after the start of the strike, because of public pressure from within Egypt and the international arena, Alaa was transferred out of Tora Prison to Wadi a-Natrun Prison northwest of Cairo. Here the conditions are slightly improved. For example, he was allowed a mattress after being forced to sleep on exposed concrete for years. Yet Egyptian authorities still refuse his main demands, and do not allow him to receive visits from family, lawyers, or members of the British embassy.

Alaa Abd al-Fattah belongs to a revolutionary family. His sister Sanaa was imprisoned for 18 months and only recently released. His mother, Dr. Laila Soueif , is a lecturer in chemistry at Cairo University. She has accompanied him for ten years, visiting him regularly and speaking bravely for the freedom of the Egyptian people. His father, the lawyer Ahmad Saif al-Islam Abd al-Fattah died in 2014, while Alaa was in prison. During the Mubarak regime he was known as a leading jurist and human rights fighter; in 1999 he cofounded the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, a human rights group which he headed for years.

In 2021 Alaa published a book of articles in English entitled You Have Not Yet Been Defeated, in which he reviews years of struggle by the youth of Egypt’s Al-Shabab revolution.

Egyptian prisons – Torture and neglect resulted in the deaths of many

The call for the release of Alaa Abd al-Fattah has become a banner of the struggle against the al-Sisi, who is estimated to hold some 60,000 people in his prisons because of their views.

In anticipation of Biden’s visit to the Middle East and his meeting with al-Sisi in Saudi Arabia, the New York Times published a comprehensive investigation into arbitrary arrests in Egypt. The article was published on July 16 under the headline “Egypt’s Revolving Jailhouse Door: One Pretrial Detention After Another.”

This is a comprehensive investigation that relies on the testimonies of volunteer lawyers who come daily to the courts in Cairo and elsewhere to locate detainees whose families have lost contact with them. These lawyers, together with the family members, prepare endless lists of detainees about whom the Egyptian authorities withhold information.

The investigation shows a Kafkaesque reality of pre-trial detention that lasts two years, after which new charges are often filed against the detainee. According to the report, the despair and difficult conditions have caused the deaths of hundreds of detainees since al-Sisi came to power.

Amnesty International also recently published a report on the extent of human rights violations in Egypt under the heading Egypt: Flawed investigation into death in custody missed opportunity for justice. The report focuses on the deaths of inmates held without trial (at least 52 deaths in 2021), citing credible reports that their deaths resulted from torture, abuse and denial of health services.

Torture and abuse are used especially during the interrogation phase and the first period of detention, as part of an attempt to extract confessions and punish dissidents. Human Rights Watch, as well as a public inquiry conducted by UN Committee Against Torture, found in separate investigations that torture in Egypt is systematic and widespread.

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Still bodies of babies, women and children, murdered by the chlorine gas – these are the recent victory pictures that Bashar Assad wants us to remember. Assad triumphed the Syrian people, he triumphed Syria and the human spirit. Five years ago, the butcher from Damascus has slaughtered more than one thousand Syrian civilians in Eastern Ghouta and crossed the red line posed by President Obama. However, he was saved from a military blow thanks to his accomplice, President Putin, which reached an agreement with Obama to disarm the Syrian regime from chemical weapon. Obama already completed his two presidential terms and the British Cameron resigned from his post, but Assad, Khamenei and Putin are here to stay, together with the poisonous gas which kill the poor who did not manage to find a haven.

These are the hands of Assad that kill and poison the Syrian people, but the responsibility lies upon the Turkish-Iranian-Russian Trinity whose leaders met a couple of days ago in Ankara to divide the booty. They agreed to divide Syria and leave Assad in power despite his responsibility for the destruction of the state and to the flee of millions of Syrians, hereby providing him the political legitimacy to annihilate the people of Douma.

Some people wonder why Assad used the gas against helpless men and women while Douma is besieged and ISIS started negotiating on leaving the town and giving it to the Russians. The answer is quite simple: Assad wanted to enforce himself on his allies. Whereas Russian wanted to skip Assad in the negotiations, whereas the Trinity wanted to ignore him in discussing the solution, his reply was immediate: Douma would have to surrender to Assad and the most practical way to accomplish this task would be using the chlorine gas.

The other half of the answer to this question is simple too. Since using a chemical weaponry against the people of Eastern Ghouta five years ago, Assad found out that there are no more red lines. The Russian cover on the one hand, and the unwillingness of the US and its allies to act decisively to stop the atrocities on the other hand, enabled him to do whatever he pleased, without paying the price for his crimes. Thus, Assad, Putin and Erdogan, along any despicable rule across the globe, knew that all means are legitimate to retain their rule: murder, destruction, exiling people and the use of chemical weapon were proved to be efficient, hereby becoming the winning cards who have saved the evil regime.

What is going in Syria serves as a pretext at the hands of Israel’s government following the fact that the international community condemned Israel for killing Palestinian demonstrators across the border between Israel and Gaza. Israel’s Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, accuses the world of hypocrisy as the latter accuses Israel but refrains from accusing Russia and the Syrian regime. Moreover, Lieberman draws a comparison between the “humanitarian” approach of the Israeli occupation and the cruelty of the Arab regimes, boasting in Israel’s democracy vis-à-vis the tyrannies in the neighboring countries.

The truth is that Lieberman, like his right-wing government, is indifferent to the atrocities in Syria, although he has influence over determining the fate of Syria and its regime through his tight coordination with the Russians. Israel’s refusal to join the US and the EU in condemning Russia for its use in gas against the Russian spy on British soil, is not less hypocritic than the way other countries are conducting. Assad’s cruelty against the Syrians doesn’t justify the cruelty of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian people as well as the fact that for fifty years Israel is busy in violating the political and civil rights of the Palestinians.

The Daam party condemns the Syrian regime and its allies and call upon the people of conscience, along with the friends of the Palestinian people, who support its rights and freedom, to endorse the Syrian people and its noble revolution against the evil regime of Assad. Whoever refuses to resist the despot, whoever justifies regime’s war crimes in the name of the struggle against Zionism and imperialism, loses the moral, political and legal basis to condemn Israel which is oppressing the Palestinian people. The fate of the Palestinians is bound with the fate of the Arab people, first and foremost the Syrian people. As long as the Arab people will be subordinated to tyrannical regimes – in Egypt, Syria, Jordan or Iraq – the Palestinian people will continue to be occupied. The collapse of Israel’s occupation depends on the collapse of the despotic Arab regimes, first and foremost the Syrian one.

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“Men are accomplices to that which leaves them indifferent” (George Steiner)

Statement of opinion, Da’am Workers Party, February 26, 2018

The horrors of recent days in East Ghouta in Syria, evident in the corpses of men, women and children, have met with global indifference, including in the Arab states. The relentless bombing by the regime and its sponsors, the Iranians and the Russians, did not hesitate to target hospitals and residential neighborhoods. This crime against humanity is witnessed hourly on TV and social networks. The lack of response, the deafening silence, attests to the loss of a sense of right and wrong, the loss of a sense of humanity. What is happening today in the suburbs of Damascus can happen anywhere tomorrow.

The person responsible for this crime is Bashar al-Assad, who is backed by Iran and Russia. But the massacre would not have proved possible had it not been for the tacit compliance of countries competing to grab a piece of the Syrian pie: the United States, Turkey, Israel and the Gulf States. Among the latter, Saudi Arabia and Qatar support mercenary militias such as the Army of Islam and the A-Nusra Front. They are joined by the American-backed Kurdish forces and the Israeli-backed Sunni rebel militias in the Golan Heights.

Contrary to Assad’s claims, in 2011, Syria was not the target of an international conspiracy, but rather a civil war between a dictatorial regime and its subjects, who have taken to the streets demanding freedom. The weakness of both the regime and the opposition has pushed both sides to seek help from outside parties who have little interest in the fate of the Syrian people, and who act in their own narrow interests. With the outbreak of the revolution in 2011, the line between the regime and the opposition was clearly drawn. However, President Obama, who had called for Assad’s downfall, turned against the Syrian opposition in order not to undermine the chances of a nuclear agreement with Iran,with the result thatAssad’s regime was narrowly saved. From the beginning of the uprising, Russia and Iran have stood with him, while the opposition enjoyed support from the United States, Turkey and the Gulf states. Nevertheless, the Russian-American agreement to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal hit the opposition hard, paved the way for the emergence of ISIS (aka the Islamic State), and allowed Assad to slaughter his people using barrel bombs. Chemical weapons in the form of chlorine bombs have also been used.

The rise of ISIS and its takeover of Mosul in Iraq led to an important change in the Obama administration. It began to see ISIS as a strategic enemy. The US lost interest in the fate of the Syrian people under Assad. It ended its support for the Free Syrian army in favor of an alliance with the Kurds, who exploited Assad’s weakness, joining the Americans in the war against ISIS in exchange for their promise of an autonomous Kurdish region near the Turkish border. This in turn led to an immediate change in Turkey’s policy: from supporting resistance against the Assad regime, Turkey switched and began a war against Kurdish autonomy. Erdogan has succeeded in enlisting Russian support for this.

Russia backed the Turkish demand to transfer control of al-Bab, northeast of Aleppo, from the Kurdish- to the Turkish-supported rebel forces. In exchange, Turkey turned a blind eye to Russian involvement in Syria, contributing, for example, in the fall of Aleppo. The Gulf States, on the other hand, armed and financed Islamic militias thataim to liquidate the popular committees of the revolutionary movement in Syria; they took the liberated areas of Idlib and East Ghouta by force.

However, despite the defeat of ISIS and the re-conquest of Mosul by Shiite militias with Iranian support, and, notwithstanding the capture of Raqqa by the Kurds with American support, the war and the massacres continue unabated, this time under the watchful eyes of all parties involved in the Syrian arena.

The current massacre in East Ghouta is a consequence of the failure of the Russian-backed peace talks in Sochi at the end of January, where Putin tried to impose a political solution leaving Assad in power. Israel, for its part, is concerned about Iranian entrenchment in Syria, viewing this as a threat to Israeli control of the Golan Heights, and as a threat to its security in general. This threat to Israelcomes on top of that posed by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

Those who pay the price of the conflict between the US and Russia, and between the regional forces of Israel, Iran, Turkey and the Gulf states, are the defenseless citizens of East Ghouta. After seven years of war that killed 400,000, incarcerated 200,000, and displaced 10 million people, it is clear that Assadcannot be part of Syria’s future.

Leaders such as Trump, Putin, Khamenei, Erdogan, Netanyahu, Mohammed bin Salman (Saudi Arabia), Tamim al-Thani (Qatar) and Hassan Nasrallah are indifferent to human rights. Syria is not the only victim of this situation. Libya, Yemen, Egypt, Iran, Turkey and Palestine are all suffocating under the yoke of oppression.

After the Syrian people, the first to pay the price for scorn of international law and for contempt of rights are the Palestinians. Trump’s decision to move the American Embassy to Jerusalem and to inaugurate it as part of Israel’s70th anniversary expresses not only its bias towards Israel, but its contempt for human rights and national freedom. Just as Putin can bomb and destroy Syria without opposition, Trump can force the Palestinians to make do with autonomy instead of an independent state.

When the Security Council stands helpless at the massacre of defenseless civilians in East Ghouta, how can we expect it to intervene in favor of the Palestinians, who have been living under occupation for 50 years? On the other hand, the silence of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in light of events in Syria undermines their moral basis, for example when they threaten to put Israel on trial for war crimes at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.They do not condemn Assad for the greatest war crimeof the century.

Israel’s policy of “non-intervention in the Syrian civil war,” in the name of its own security, is a failure. Not only because of its immorality, but also because the barbaric Russian and Iranian intervention that saved the Assad regime has turned Syria into a forward base for Iran and Russia. Israel sees Iran positioning itself near the border,an act that heightens the danger of war. The indifference of the Israeli public to what is happening in Syria only proves how successful 50 years of occupation have been. The occupation has closed the hearts of Israelis. They have grown accustomed to the scenes of destruction by their air force in Gaza, and the almost daily killing of Palestinian civilians who oppose military control.

The Da’am Workers Party, which supports the rights of the Palestinian people, also stands with the Syrian people who raised the revolutionary banner “Freedom and Democracy.” We call upon foreign forces – the United States, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Israel, Qatar and Saudi Arabia – to withdraw from Syria and let the Syrians decide their future without foreign interference, not only for the benefit of Syria, but in the interests of all its neighbors.The alternative is a prolonged war that has already reached beyond Syria’s borders and threatens to engulf the region. It has the potential of bringing the US and Russia intoa direct confrontationthat could explode into an unthinkable war, after which, to quote Albert Einstein, the next will be fought with rocks.

* Translated from the Hebrew by Robert Goldman

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What is happening today in Iran proves that the Spring is alive and well. In fact, we may trace its beginning to Iran in 2009, where it was triggered by election-rigging in Ahmadinejad’s camp. Two years later it spread like wildfire throughout the Arab world. Two regional oil powers, Saudi Arabia and Shiite fundamentalist Iran, did everything possible to drown the Spring in blood. Saudi Arabia financed the coup of General Sisi in Egypt, and Iran backed Assad’s efforts to wipe out the Syrian revolution. Hostility toward the Spring was shared equally by the Saudi and Iranian regimes, but Iran seemed to have the upper hand in Yemen, Iraq, and Syria – the Shia Crescent that keeps Israel awake at night.

Everything seemed finished: Saudi Arabia up to its neck in Yemen; Syria carved up among the victors (Putin, Erdogan and Khamenei); and Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, Saudi Arabia’s long-time ally, aligning himself with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Suddenly, however, Iranian workers, students and young people took to the streets and spoiled the party. The paradox is that Iranian “triumphs” hastened the outbreak of the current demonstrations. Unlike the Green Movement that broke out in Tehran in 2009, the current protests are not calling just for reform of the Islamic regime, rather they are demanding its overthrow.

On the diplomatic front, Iran’s moderate reformist president, Hassan Rouhani, could pat himself on the back after the signing of the nuclear agreement with the Obama administration. The Iranian people put their faith in Rouhani. He managed to get rid of most economic sanctions on Iran, but on the other hand, he allowed Major General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force, to conduct his adventures in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. The sanctions were lifted, Iran returned to being an oil economy, which initially grew by 12%, and the war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria was over.

The problem lies in the fact that economic growth did not trickle down. Daily life remains tough, and the annual budget submitted by Rouhani slashed subsidies on food and fuel. The public realized that oil revenues were being used to finance Soleimani’s adventures. Thousands of Iranians have poured into the streets protesting against Hezbollah, Hamas and Shiite militias in Iraq and Yemen. They are attacking the Iranian leadership because they feel that the military ventures have taken priority over the people’s welfare.

Today, many clever people are celebrating at the expense of the Iranian regime. They are led by the Saudis, Trump, and Netanyahu. The joy may be premature, however. Not because the demonstrations have still not swelled into a general revolt, but because the fall of the Iranian regime will benefit not the Saudis, nor Trump, nor Netanyahu. Iran’s fiscal difficulties stem from the same structural problems that Saudi Arabia suffers (even though the Saudis are dealing with them in a different way.) Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman staged a palace coup and called for the modernization of his economy. The plan, Vision 2030, is intended to deal with the plunge in oil prices, which has spawned a budget deficit. Nevertheless, many pundits doubt his ability to make the necessary changes without an overhaul of the kingdom.

Despite their differences, Saudi Arabia and Iran are running a similar economic system of centralization in favor of the ruling class. In the case of the Saudis, it’s all about the royal court and those close to it. In the Iranian case, it’s about the Revolutionary Guards and those close to them. In both countries, the religious establishment is the final arbiter of law and lifestyle. Modesty patrols invade the private lives of citizens, and freedom of speech is limited to statements that do not harm the regime and “public sentiment.” Needless to say, interpreting “public sentiment” is in the hands of religious scholars alone. The two countries, Saudi Arabia and Iran, are hungry for foreign investment to diversify their economies, but corruption and severe restrictions on freedom drive potential investors away. Saudi Arabia and Iran both rely on oil exports to finance an Islamic welfare state, blocking the technological revolution which drives the economic engine of the 21st century.

The third industrial revolution, built on renewable energy and the Internet, makes oil economies irrelevant. At a time when traditional industries are losing ground to advanced manufacturing based on technology and renewable energy, Arab regimes and the Iranians are becoming an obstacle to economic development. They are sentencing most of their citizens to a life of backwardness and poverty. The origins of the Iranian and Arab Spring have roots in the failure of neoliberal economic regimes to ensure the welfare of the citizens, not only in the Middle East but also in Western economies and, first and foremost, the US itself. The fact that the Saudis succeeded in thwarting the Egyptian revolution, and the Iranians in thwarting the Syrian revolution, is temporary. The Spring will not skip over them.

The collapse of the Iranian regime, if it occurs, is liable to remove the “strategic threat” that has made Netanyahu’s entire career. In any case, the Iranian threat is more an Israeli fantasy than reality. Israel has been Iran’s excuse to expand its influence in the Arab world. The Iranian revolution has challenged the Saudi kingdom for hegemony in the Islamic world. Iran and Hezbollah inscribed “Jerusalem” on their banner in order to conquer Aleppo, Mosul, Sana’a, and Beirut.

The fall of the Iranian regime would catalyze the collapse of other dictators in the Middle East, such as Egypt’s Sisi, Syria’s Assad, and eventually the Saudi regime. The last seeks to sidestep this destiny by trying to build a modern economy layered on an archaic regime, but it cannot work. The Iranian threat will be removed from Israel, and in its place there will be a much greater threat: without nuclear weapons, without fundamentalist ideology, but equipped with weapons of knowledge and freedom of information. Let’s call it the threat of the new Arab Democracy.

The State of Israel is very invested in threats, and it has a strong army that identifies and deals with them. However, IDF intelligence failed to predict the revolution in Egypt, just as it did not foresee the first intifada 30 years ago. The concept of Arab civil society, modern economics, democratic government, the entry of the Arab world into the 21st century through renewable energy, and the internet revolution are not considered a possibility. The statement by Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman that” democracy does not suit the Arabs” is a guiding light for Israel.

The fact is that Israel, the start-up nation and the “only democracy in the Middle East,” views benighted regimes such as the military dictatorship in Egypt and the Saudi royal family as strategic allies, and their possible fall as an immediate and tangible danger. In the Arab region, a reality will be created in which the “only democracy in the Middle East” will be judged according to what it is: a colonialist and fundamentalist state, a remnant of the last century. And who knows, perhaps the Spring will also knock on its door.

*Translated from the Hebrew by Robert Goldman

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The entire world was astonished when Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman embarked on a sweeping crackdown and purged some of the kingdom’s most important princes and businessmen. Within a day, he announced the creation of an “Anti-Corruption Committee.” Saudi Arabia’s billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal was arrested along with at least ten other princes, several government ministers and former ministers, as well as two of the late King Abdullah’s sons. They have been corralled into a luxurious hotel once frequented by Saudi sheikhs. This is indeed a coup. Politicians and commentators are crossing fingers for the young prince in the hope that this gambit pays off, and that Mohammad bin Salman will succeed in taking control of all branches of power that are now held by the 15,000 members of the House of Saud.

The crown prince aims to change the world order in a kingdom where time has stood still since 1932, the year of its founding, thanks to oil resources that once seemed inexhaustible. The Saudi kingdom was created on oil wells, and it is because of this that its distorted economy has survived. It’s a kind of welfare state that allows the people of the kingdom to live without working as long as they adhere to Sharia law. Saudi women are at the mercy of men in all respects, and work is done by foreign workers without rights.

But like every good thing, the petrodollar celebration is coming to an end. The fall in oil prices has pushed the Saudi economy towards an abyss. Economic growth is near zero, and the kingdom will not survive unless it changes radically. When historians mark the beginning of the end of the kingdom, they will have no trouble noting the date – September 11, 2001. After all, Saudi Arabia exports not only oil, which lubricates the wheels of the global economy (and has made countless petrodollars which were invested in American banks and enterprises), it also exports a version of Islamic jihad. The Shiite Islamic revolution in Iran in the late 1970s frightened the Saudis, and in response, they established a wide global network for the spread of Wahhabism. This is an Islamic doctrine that insists on a literal interpretation of the Koran. Saudi Arabia was founded on Wahhabism, and it is its dominant faith today.

September 11 changed the world. The same oil that moved the world economy also spread destruction by funding Sunni fundamentalist groups such as al-Qaeda. The West realized that dependence on Saudi oil must be reduced – the sooner the better. While the Americans discovered a way of extracting oil from shale, the world learned that oil not only spreads radical Islam, but also pollutes the air and brings about global warming. That’s why the Saudi kingdom switched from being a strategic asset to a huge problem. Obama did not hide his opinion about the Saudis when he abandoned them in favor of the nuclear agreement with Iran. And although Trump chose to make his first visit outside the US borders to Saudi Arabia and to withdraw from the Paris agreement, which restricts greenhouse gas emissions, this will not change the historical trend – the abandonment of oil and fossil energy in favor of renewable energy.

The kingdom has set a date. Mohammed bin Salman announced the year 2030 as the goal, and “Vision 2030” is the name of an economic plan that is supposed to launch the medieval monarchy into the 21st century. However, this dramatic program in the social and economic spheres ignores the need to change the regime, which will remain an absolute monarchy. Even though Saudi Arabia is hungry for overseas capital to diversify its economy and reduce its dependence on oil sales, anyone who looks at the initial data, which are amazing and frightening, finds it hard to understand how the young and energetic prince can succeed in squaring the circle: In Saudi Arabia there is no civil legal system except for Sharia courts, there is no restriction on the age of marriage, and there are no rights for women. It is not clear that Western investors will invest in a country where the law is in the hands of Sheikhs who rule according to such an extreme and rigid tradition. Equally amazing is that one-third of the kingdom’s 30 million residents are foreign nationals who serve as the labor force in industry and services, while 20 million Saudis work in the public sector and/or live on subsidies.

There is no question that the Crown Prince must make drastic changes if he wants his country to move toward modernity. Having decided to stop dependence on oil sales, he must also wean the economy of foreign workers and train Saudis to work for private employers according to the rules of a modern economy. Although it will be possible for women to get a driver’s license (taking effect only in June 2018), in order to work they will have to have a valid identity card and passport, plus a male guardian’s consent. In order to overcome the deficit in the state budget, instead of subsidizing citizens, taxes will have to be placed on them, and a profound reform of the education system will need to be undertaken. This will mean a shift from religious to scientific studies in order to integrate workers into a high-tech economy. No less crucial, the prince must eliminate the corruption that has crept into every corner of the kingdom. Saudi citizens will not forever cooperate with a regime in which taxes and oil revenues finance the bloated royal family.

It can be said that Saudi Arabia is at the same point that the Arab regimes reached in 2011, when they fell like dominoes in the Arab Spring. The purges conducted by Mohammad bin Salman are evidence that the Saudi regime suffers from wide-scale corruption, oppression, and lack of democracy, just like those regimes that have already disappeared. The only difference is that Saudi Arabia has held out longer because it breathes petrol fumes.

The Saudi regime is currently trying to do exactly what its predecessors did two decades before they collided with the Arab Spring. Assad and Mubarak dismantled the welfare state and enforced a neo-liberal market economy that only widened the gap between the ruling elite and the general public. Corruption and oppression caused people to rise up, and the regimes collapsed. Mohammed bin Salman’s attempts to gain global recognition, his commitment to stop promoting radical Islam, his war on corruption, and his promise to invest billions in a modern, green economy, will not convince those who understand that such an economy cannot tolerate dictatorship. Modernization must be based on intellectual pluralism, sharing instead of centralization, and a total democratization of the regime.

Here we should remember another important detail. One of the reasons why the Arab Spring failed was the resolute opposition of the Saudis to the revolutionary wave. Saudi money financed el-Sisi’s military coup, which was grounded in political terrorism and corruption; it also backed jihadist militias that put down democratic forces in Syria (thus indirectly serving the Syrian regime and providing an excuse for Russian and Iranian intervention). In spite of all the bloodshed and prophecies about the demise of the Arab Spring, the Saudi Kingdom now faces the very same challenge: either to embrace modernity, democracy, alternative energy, and the freedom of information that flows through the internet – or to disappear.

The Arab Spring was a wake-up call. The young people in the Arab world set a clear path for the future. The Saudis did everything to obstruct the course of history in Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Syria. However, history knows no mercy. It is now knocking at the gates of the kingdom itself. Saudi Arabia must decide whether to stand on the side of progress or to oppose it and disappear. Mohammad bin Salman’s purge campaign is no more than a desperate attempt to ward off the inevitable: regime change in Saudi Arabia as a prelude to regime change in the entire Arab world. A democratic transformation in Saudi Arabia, when it happens, will determine not only the fate of that country but of the entire Arab world. The writing is on the wall. It was written in the winter of 2011, and it cannot be erased.

* Translated from the Hebrew by Robert Goldman

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The fall of Aleppo is viewed in Israel as a great victory for Bashar Assad, and as the first step towards the resumption of his control over Syria. Idlib, still in rebel hands, is next in line. After Idlib is pounded to smithereens, Russian and Syrian aircraft and the Shiite militias will head south to restore order to the part of the Golan Heights that Bashar used to hold. Then the Redeemer will come to Zion. But if you take a closer look at how Aleppo fell, it is not clear that Assad is indeed on his way to regain control over Syria. On the contrary, at center stage in the unfolding picture are Putin, Khamenei, Nasrallah, Erdogan and Netanyahu, while Assad has been shunted to the background. The powers determining the future of Aleppo in particular, and of Syria in general, are the Russians and the Iranians. Assad legitimized their intervention along with that of various militias operating on their behalf.

It was not by accident that the cease-fire agreement, and the agreement on evacuating the tens of thousands trapped in Aleppo, was reached in the Turkish city of Ankara. The Turks brokered the deal between the Russian military representative and the besieged Syrian rebels. The fact that this agreement did not occur without Iran’s consent shows who the real players are in this horror film. Assad is out of the picture: Having lost his army and status, he is totally dependent on the Russians and the Iranians. They will emerge as the powerbrokers in Syria for years to come.

In the summer of 2015, the Assad regime was on the ropes. Without massive Russian intervention, Syria would have fallen to the opposition. When he understood that Obama was refusing to get seriously engaged in the fighting and did not want the rebels to win, Putin entered the vacuum with a murderous display of power. He wasn’t alone. Russia and Iran divided the work – Russian planes targeted the rebel-controlled city causing indiscriminate civilian deaths. Iranian and Hezbollah forces then moved in, purging, murdering, raping and looting.

One cannot make sense of the collapse of Aleppo without understanding Turkey’s role. As said, the surrender agreement was signed in Ankara, and not between Kerry and Lavrov in Geneva. Aleppo might not have fallen if not for Erdogan’s political flip-flop after the failed coup against him in July. Erdogan understood that Obama was acting behind his back when the US armed and supported the Kurdish militias under the pretext of fighting ISIS. He watched with alarm the creation of the Kurdish canton of Rojava along the Syrian border. Seeing this as a serious threat to Turkish national security, Erdogan—who till then had supported the Syrian rebels—made a U-turn. He humbled himself before Putin, mended their strained relations and renewed diplomatic ties with Netanyahu. His deal with Putin is clear: Russia agrees to a Turkish security zone inside Syrian territory at the expense of the Kurds, and Turkey refrains from opposing Russian intervention in Syria, especially in Aleppo.

Last August, Erdogan began his “Operation Protective Shield,” intending to capture the northern border area in Syria from ISIS and the Kurds, where he would then create the desired security zone. In parallel, the Russians and Iranians began preparations to conquer Aleppo. Turkey established a Syrian militia called the “Syrian Free Army,” made up of units once supported by the Americans, and changed its priorities. By withdrawing support for the rebels in Aleppo, Turkey was free at last to set up the much desired security zone against the Kurds.

With this turnabout, some of the Turkish-supported rebels left Aleppo and joined the new Turkish force. Their departure formed the first crack in the opposition front in Aleppo, a crack that allowed militias supporting Assad to take over neighborhoods previously in rebel hands. Renewal of relations between Erdogan and Putin was undoubtedly a serious blow to the Syrian rebels. They lost a main ally (Turkey) just as Iran and Russia stepped up their murderous offensive.

The fall of Aleppo leaves Syria in the hands of four major players, each with a direct interest: Turkey dominates the countryside north of Aleppo, a stone’s throw from the city; Russia sees itself as the acting ruler of Syria because of its air superiority (without which the Iranians alone could not have defeated the insurgents); Iran is still a player because Putin is not willing to dirty his hands on the ground. Putin needs the Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias as a policing force, and therefore he must take Iran’s interests into account. Facing all this is Israel, which maintains good relations with Putin and has recently revamped relations with Turkey. On the other hand, Israel sees Iran and Hezbollah as existential threats. Standing among these four players, each of which has huge military power, is Bashar al-Assad. He has no army, no economy, and a beaten-down population. After destroying his state, bombing his cities, murdering and exiling his own people, Assad celebrates victory!

To get the proper perspective as to what might take place in Syria, one can learn from the Iraqi example. At the end of 2011, in accordance with President Obama’s election commitment, the last American soldier left Iraq. Still ruled by the pro-Iranian Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq, like Syria today, fell easily into Iranian hands. Nonetheless, there was a fly in the ointment: two years later Mosul fell to ISIS, and Iraq has been crumbling ever since.

Assad’s regime is much weaker than the Iraqi regime. Syria is completely in ruins as a result of his Russian friend’s bombing, which has destroyed the very cities he is slated to control. About half of Syria’s residents have lost their homes and been forced to leave. Up to a half a million have been killed by the regime. Assad has lost all legitimacy not only in the eyes of his own people, but in the eyes of the world. Of course, he would like to restore his control, and Israel would like that to happen, but having destroyed his own country he has nowhere to go.

The impotence of the international community says it all. About Obama’s lack of leadership much will be written, and the beautiful friendship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin raises concerns not only regarding peace in Syria, but for the entire world. What is happening in Aleppo, near the Euphrates River, and in Mosul on the banks of the Tigris, attests more than anything else to the region’s accelerating disintegration. The unwillingness of the international community to support revolutions demanding democracy, and their insistence on working with benighted regimes like Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have led the entire region into a state of civil war of an ethnic/tribal nature. This is causing indescribable suffering for millions of people, and massive waves of migration will continue to alter the demographic and political map of Europe.

Within this painful process, dictatorial regimes crumble because they are unable to adapt themselves to the spirit of the times. The problem lies in the fact that democratic forces have lost ground in favor of Islamist extremists of all varieties. These extremists are supported by monarchist regimes and dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Setting the tone are Hezbollah and Iraqi Shiite militias on one side, ISIS and Sunni militias on the other. Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi, rely on radical Shiite militias to impose their rule. Facing them are Sunni extremists, propped up by sectarian hatred and supported by the Gulf States.

In the middle are millions of people, Shia and Sunni alike, who rose up to seek democracy and social justice. They see how their countries have been repeatedly raped by authoritarian regimes. The silence of the international community cannot be understood only as indifference, but as mistrust and hostility towards millions of young Arabs. These are people who seek an escape from backwardness and tyranny to democracy and freedom, people who want to integrate into the modern world. Trump and Putin, Netanyahu and Erdogan, the Saudi king and the rulers of Iran are united against these educated young people and against the marginalized poor. They leave us with the horrors of Aleppo, which will haunt us for many years to come.

Translated from the Hebrew by Robert Goldman

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As with his entry into Syria, Putin’s departure comes as a surprise and leaves us guessing about his intentions. Today, as in October 2015, the world looks with amazement at the all-powerful Vladimir Putin, the leader of Russia, who appears to be the only one who knows how to capitalize on American weakness and restore Russia’s international status. Indeed, there is a huge contrast between Putin, who sent planes to bomb Syrian cities, and Obama, who demurred about taking any action to implement his demands that Bashar al-Assad step aside. American passivity fueled Russian activism. So far, however, neither Putin nor Obama has taken steps to end the bloodshed and the terrible destruction in Syria.

Since no one knows what Putin’s goals were when he deployed the Russian air force to Syria, there is no one who can specify for certain his motives for withdrawal. It may be possible to attribute this to his political genius, but it might equally be true that the whole venture is a folly that has entangled Russia in a conflict whose outcome is unpredictable.

There is little doubt that Putin’s intervention was intended to save the Assad regime from collapse. In this he failed. Assad will not survive despite massive support from Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and the Iraqi Shiite militias. Even though the Syrian opposition is unable to defend itself from Russian and Syrian air power, and even though it has no counter to the supply of Russian weapons, and despite the West’s inaction, the Assad regime remains teetering on the verge of collapse, its military crumbling. Even after the terrible destruction inflicted on Syria – 350,000 deaths, millions of refugees, destroyed cities and starving citizens – the picture has not changed.

Despite its claim to be fighting the Islamic State (ISIS), Russia focused its attacks on areas controlled by the moderate Syrian opposition, which sees ISIS as an enemy. The results of Russian involvement in Syria are devastating: 2000 killed in aerial bombardments, the complete destruction of clinics, markets, schools and homes in areas controlled by the moderate Syrian opposition, and tens of thousands of refugees, who have fled the fighting and are trying to escape to the West. Many of the more recent refugees are now on the border with Turkey. Turkey refuses to let them enter its territory, so they are abandoned to harsh weather and appalling living conditions. The desert region in Syria is controlled by ISIS. It was never bombed, and life there goes on as usual. Thus, Russia is contributing to the growing humanitarian disaster in Syria without diminishing ISIS’s hold over territory.

Putin’s “achievements” are meager. He weakened the democratic opposition to Assad. He accomplished this with the help of Kurdish forces, who exploited Russian bombing to join forces with Assad and grab territory from the opposition. Putin did return some vital areas to Assad’s control. These include the supply routes between Turkey and the besieged city of Aleppo. However, here Putin was forced to stop. Neither Assad nor Putin are able to conquer Aleppo. All attempts to cut off the city from its Turkish hinterground may lead to direct intervention by Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which have repeatedly stated that this is a red line for them.

Putin’s main goal was to defeat the opposition, and replace it with an “opposition” loyal to the Assad regime. For a long time Moscow acted to create an alternative to the opposition democratic forces. These efforts were concentrated on the Kurdish Democratic Party (PYD). However, the Turkish veto thwarted the Russians. They were compelled, in effect, to declare a ceasefire before completing their mission. The new round of negotiations in Geneva between the opposition and the Syrian regime marks, for now, the end of the Russian military campaign. Assad, unlike the Russians, does not want a ceasefire, and has no interest in renewing negotiations. Hence, the statement of the Syrian Foreign Minister, Walid Muallem, that Assad’s future is not up for discussion. This position highlights the gap between the Syrian regime and its Russian benefactor.

The ceasefire was used by the democratic opposition in Syria to come out and protest against the regime. Non-violent mass demonstrations, which took place in the streets of the bombed-out cities, were reminiscent of protests at the beginning of the revolution. Despite the death and destruction that have been visited on the Syrian people in the past five years, they have not given up and refuse to return to the days of dictatorship. These demonstrations will not affect Putin. Like all dictators, he holds life and human rights in contempt. But they make it clear that aerial bombing will not decide the outcome of the war. There is no chance that Assad’s disintegrating regime will overcome civil resistance to his rule. Putin was sorely mistaken when he came to protect this bloody regime; a regime that had lost all legitimacy in the eyes of its people and in the eyes of the international community. His efforts to save a government accused of committing crimes against humanity reveals the fact that Putin lacks all moral boundaries.

Putin has no winning cards. His “tactical flexibility” of withdrawal cannot determine Syria’s future, and all attempts to save the Assad regime will only prolong the war and increase the flow of refugees to Europe. Russia itself is edging toward economic collapse. It does not have much to offer the Syrian economy except arms. Iran and Hezbollah will not contribute anything to help rebuild Syria. Russia may have a formidable air force, but it is no a position to financially help Syria and influence its future. Putin knows how to destroy, but he leaves reconstruction to others. Indeed, the Syrian people need an enormous influx of economic aid from the international community so that they can rebuild what Assad destroyed.

Russian withdrawal from Syria is symptomatic of Assad’s failed policy of relying on a military solution. It also shows that ISIS was never an enemy of the regime, but an enemy of the Syrian revolution and its democratic agenda. Despite all the words spilled about the danger of ISIS, the Russian and Syrian regimes never really engaged them militarily. To defeat ISIS, one must first remove the rationale that led to its proliferation, i.e. Assad. Today the Syrian regime is forced to negotiate with the opposition; it has agreed to a ceasefire, and eventually will be forced to give up the battle cry: “Assad or the country burns!”

Putin understands that Assad will not return to be the leader of Syria, so he clings to the idea of dividing the country along sectarian lines. This will enable him to continue to control the seaport and the airport near the Alawite-controlled coastal city of Latakia. That is why he helped the Kurds to establish their autonomous region in northern Syria. But the majority of the Syrian people oppose this idea because it leaves Syria in conflict, divided, and easy prey to repeated interference from Iran, Hezbollah, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. Dividing the country will also strengthen ISIS and thwart plans for rebuilding. The only basis for the rehabilitation of Syria is the creation of a democratic regime.

The proposal of dividing Syria into enclaves is actually a replication of the Iraq and Lebanon model, which will only perpetuate internal conflicts, sectarian violence and instability. The attempt to impose this model on Syria will intensify extremism, increase the suffering of civilians and leave ISIS as a major player in the region. If the Syrian people will not unite around a democratic constitution that guarantees the rights of all citizens, regardless of religion or sect, the civil war in Syria will continue even after Assad falls.

• Translated from the Hebrew by Robert Goldman

The post Putin: I Came, I Destroyed, I Left first appeared on Da'am Party: One state - Green Economy.

As the civil war enters its fifth year, it is becoming increasingly difficult to gain an understanding of the turn of events in Syria: Who is fighting whom and why? Who are the good guys and who are the bad? Before we try to untangle the knot, one thing is clear: Those responsible for the unimaginable killing and destruction are the Assad regime and its allies – Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah. Only Russia has the air power capable of destroying what still remains intact in Syria, as it did in Chechnya, and only Assad has a quantity of aircraft capable of spewing destruction on such a large scale. Neither ISIL (aka ISIS or DA’ESH) nor the rest of the opposition possess heavy weapons, aircraft, or ground-to-air missiles, leaving them defenseless against air strikes.

Geographically, Syria is split in two: The “populated” area in the West and the “desert” area in the East. Assad abandoned the latter at the very beginning of the war and it ended up in ISIL’s hands. From Daraa in the south, near the border with Jordan, to Aleppo in the north, near the border of Turkey, stretches a road running through the capital Damascus and the cities of Hama and Homs, which remain in the hands of the regime. The war is over the “populated” area, which includes Syria’s most important cities. Assad’s control over this area is precarious, and without massive Russian intervention, his regime would be on the verge of falling.

The great puzzle is not what has prevented the downfall of the Assad regime, but why the United States is silent in the face of unbridled Russian aggression. The realization that Assad has no future in Syria is now an international consensus uniting most leaders, including Putin and Obama. While Iran continues to ally itself to Assad and is prepared to fight to the last Syrian, most reasonable people understand that Assad has lost his legitimacy after displacing 10 million people, almost half Syria’s population. With hundreds of thousands becoming refugees overnight and dozens being killed every day, how can one explain the fact that US Secretary of State John Kerry hasn’t sardonically quipped – as he did when the Israelis shelled Shejaiya in the last Gaza war – “That was a hell of a pinpoint operation!”

Furthermore, why are the Russians and the Americans supporting the YPD Kurdish party? After all, the Kurdish aim is to exploit the Syrian civil war and establish an autonomous Kurdish province called “Rojava” bordering Turkey, like the Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq. And how to explain the fact that the same Kurds are fighting beside Assad against the Syrian Opposition Forces and are helping him besiege Aleppo? How does it serve American interests to transplant into Syria a failed sectarian Iraqi model (aiding the Shiites and abandoning the Sunnis)? And how can we talk about war against ISIL when, in fact, Syria is divided along sectarian lines and, as in Iraq, the large Sunni majority is left without hope? But the biggest question is this: In the aftermath of the nuclear agreement with Iran, what does the US want in the Middle East? Does it support a Shiite government in Iraq? Does it favor the removal of Assad and support the Kurdish YPD?

Indeed, diplomacy is the name of the game. John Kerry will keep meeting his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, and, between handshakes and smiles, convey a sense of agreement between the great powers. Recently the two held a conference under the dubious title, “Conference of Friends of the Syrian People,” which gathered all the bitter enemies of Syria who are massacring and starving the Syrian population every day. The nuclear deal with Iran and the chemical weapons agreement between Obama and Putin created, say American diplomats, “positive” momentum. So they sit and talk while the Iranians and the Russians terrorize the world.

The latest farce was the convening of the Third Geneva Convention, where Kerry forced the opposition to participate without having discussed the future of Assad. Indeed the desired conference was held and served as a prelude to the murderous Russian assault on Aleppo, which sought to overwhelm the opposition and obviate the need for further negotiations.

The Obama doctrine is simple, if somewhat unreasonable: The civil war in Syria must be resolved on the basis of a compromise between the regime and the opposition. It sounds logical enough, except that Assad does not recognize the opposition, and the opposition will never share power with a regime that has massacred and exiled the Syrian people.

It is clear that Iran continues to prop up the Assad regime, which gives it a power base in Syria and provides vital backing to her protégée, Hezbollah in Lebanon. It is clear that Russia is not ready to forgo its alliance with Syria in favor of the United States. It is also clear that Saudi Arabia and Turkey are determined not to let the Iranians, the Kurds or the Russians decide the fate of Syria. But what about Obama? Since his policy of diplomacy is not working, he makes do with passing out vague tips to the world backed up by zero action: Obama tells the Russians that it’s not worthwhile to continue waging war for economic reasons and warns them against becoming embroiled in the conflict; he warns Assad that even if he conquers Aleppo, most of the country will still remain outside his control; he cautions the Saudis not to get militarily involved in Syria and is preventing them from equipping the opposition with anti-aircraft weapons; he has forbidden the Turks from bombing the Kurdish region or establishing a no-fly zone; and he urges the Europeans to be compassionate and to absorb the millions of refugees knocking on their doors. However, after backing down from his own “red line” in the chemical weapons affair, what he is ready to do remains unclear.

The problem is that the Iranians, Russians, Saudis, and Turks are stubborn enough not to heed the learned advice of the American president. As long as the Russians, Assad, Iran, Hezbollah, and the Kurds tighten their siege on Aleppo, and as long as the Saudis and the Turks threaten to send in ground forces – the Turks to fight against the Kurds and the Saudis against the Iranians – what will the Americans do? And if they do something, how will the Russians react? The situation is complex. Turkey is a member of NATO, and any Russian attack on her will be considered an attack on NATO. Saudi Arabia, for its part, might expand and replicate its war (against Iran in Yemen) in Syria. Thus while Obama shilly-shallies – spewing advice, cooperating with Russia, and accepting mass slaughter – the Middle East slides toward an all-out war that may easily engulf the world.

Some unresolved questions remain, such as, who are the rebels? The rebels are a horde of local militias competing for Saudi and Qatari funding. Since the Americans refuse to support the revolutionaries, including the liberal and democratic opposition, the Saudis and Qatar use oil revenues to “buy” those local militias that share the fundamentalist Saudi ideology. The resulting strength of these fundamentalists gives the Americans a reason to turn their back on the rebels. American inactivity has led to the rise of ISIL, as well as to the Saudi and Qatari intervention in Syria. And now it cooperates with Russia, which fights the very rebels that America nominally supports. Putin is doing Obama’s dirty work.

It is easy to say that Syria has fallen to the bad guys and so the West cannot support any party in the conflict. However, in Syria there are bad guys and then there are very bad guys: The regime is the source of evil there, and its continued existence only increases the power of the extremists. Nonetheless, Syria also has much going for it. While the number of warring militias is not large and their impact is limited, there are still hundreds of thousands of young Syrian democrats who waged the revolution, and without them Syria has no future. They have not disappeared and they continue their activities, whether in Syria or in exile. They are determined to build a modern democratic state living in peace with its neighbors. The good guys are the majority. They work tirelessly to build a civil society. They see the totalitarian regimes in Saudi Arabia, in Qatar, and in Iran and know that there’s not much to learn from them. I met a Syrian refugee in Germany who said, “We chose democracy as in the West, and we expected the West to support us, but when they said, ‘You must decide between Assad or ISIL,’ we refused. We want democracy and we are willing to sacrifice our lives for it.”

• Translated from the Hebrew by Robert Goldman

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The revolutionary uprising in Syria that started in March 2011 as part of the Arab Spring, and the current struggle there, have had a huge impact on my political party, the Organization for Democratic Action (ODA-DAAM, henceforth DAAM). Because of Syria’s proximity to Israel and Palestine, developments there directly affect Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. Hamas is close to the Islamic Brotherhood in Syria and elsewhere, Fatah is close to Arab regimes such as Assad’s in Syria and Sisi’s in Egypt, while the Salafi and Jihadist movements influence Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line.

One’s position on the Syrian revolution is a litmus test for any one who is politically active. Therefore, it is a precondition for building a Jewish-Arab political party in Israel, such as DAAM, that we find Palestinian partners, inside and outside Israel, who support democracy in Syria. We are talking here about the tragedies of two peoples with a common cause: the Syrians and the Palestinians. Then there are the Israelis, who are generally indifferent to the fate of both Palestinians and Syrians. The Israelis do not see in Syria a revolution, they only see extremist Islam and religious struggles. Berlin seems to them much closer than Damascus.

Let us start from the present. Today (January 30, 2016), the delegation of the Syrian opposition decided to participate in the 3rd Geneva conference to discuss the fate of Syria. This is a tragedy. Oslo was also a tragedy, but it was supported by both the Palestinians and the Israelis. In fact, the decision to establish DAAM came from our understanding that Oslo was the surrender of the Palestinian revolution. The difference between the two tragedies is that the Syrians do not believe in the Geneva 3 negotiations. They are participating because they have lost control over the situation in Syria.

We are in a stalemate. The opposition cannot topple Assad, while Assad’s government cannot rule Syria. Neither the Syrian government nor the opposition can accept the other side as a partner, yet the Americans and the Russians have forced them to convene, which is absurd. No less absurd is the flow of hundreds of thousands of Syrians into Germany, because they have a country they love but cannot go back to.

The Syrian opposition sought help from everyone they could think of: from the Turks, the Saudis and mainly from the Americans. Yet last week when U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry came to Riyadh, he simply adopted the Russian point of view; threatening withdrawal of support, he ordered the Syrian opposition to go to the negotiations without preconditions, not even a halt to the bombings and the starvation. That is why the Syrians feel that Kerry betrayed them and that they are alone.

So much for the present situation. Now let us go back to the beginning. When the revolution started in 2011 it was a surprise. People tried to understand what had led to the uprising. Examining the past, one can trace similar developments that led to the Arab spring. The common denominator among these countries was that their regimes were trying to apply the same economic formula, abandoning the old state-regulated economies and moving into neoliberalism. This shift in policy served small elites, who became rich and corrupt, while most people were abandoned to poverty without functioning social services or social safety nets. This was true for countries like Tunisia, Egypt and Syria. It had nothing to do with ISIL, which did not exist then.

In Egypt, in 2008, the revolution began with a wave of strikes in the Mahala al-Kubra textile factories. The workers called for a general strike on April 6. They were supported by a group of students who formed the April 6 movement. Thus in Egypt the workers played a very fundamental role in the revolution; it was by no means the creation of the Facebook youth alone. The workers’ incessant strikes during the uprising helped bring Mubarak down. In Tunisia too, the strikes of the Gafsa phosphate miners, which started in 2008, played an important role in the revolution. Then came the Libyan uprising, in which the USA intervened militarily to bring down Kaddafi. On seeing this, Syrians believed that here was their opportunity to topple the Assad dynasty. They believed that peaceful demonstrations like those that had occurred in Egypt would bring Assad down. Unlike the Egyptian case, however, the regime began slaughtering the demonstrators. The belief that the West would intervene as it had in Libya turned out to be naive.

Mubarak, Kaddafi and Assad (the father) had much in common. All came from the military, ruled their countries for 40 years, and wanted to bequeath their states to their sons. Their countries and citizens meant no more to them than a springboard for becoming vastly rich, so they could pass the wealth and power to their sons. Corruption was rampant. For example, anyone who wanted to study in a university, get a diploma, or even get out of prison after the end of the sentence, had to pay large sums, reaching $30,000. In the embattled cities of Syria, today and yesterday, corruption even exploits the hunger under siege. Jaish al-Islam, a jihadist group, buys food from Assad’s army officers and sells it for a fortune to those of the starving people who can pay.

In 2008, when the wave of strikes started in Egypt, DAAM recognized that this was the start of a revolution. We wondered who the strikers were, because until then the only demonstrations in Egypt had focused on the Palestinian issue, never on Egyptian causes.

We applied the same logic to the Palestinian struggle. We have always believed that one cannot help the Palestinians if they do not first help themselves. They have no economy or social infrastructure, while Israel has both, in addition to a strong army. We have always said, “You have to develop your social infrastructure. (Hamas) rockets and missiles alone will not bring down the Occupation and will not lead to independence. If you have a culture, an economy, a cohesive society, and a strategy, you will not need the missiles. To say ‘God is Great’ does not help either.”

We saw this pattern in Lebanon too, where the Hezbollah, an ultra-nationalist Shiite movement, was ready to sacrifice Lebanese and Palestinian lives in Lebanon. DAAM called their bluff, claiming that Hezbollah was using the anti-Israeli tactic in order to take power in Lebanon, just as Hamas did in Gaza. Neither poses a real threat to the Israelis, nor has either of them won any war against Israel: they have just wanted to establish their own power. Is it a wonder, then, that today Hezbollah is killing Syrians, not Israelis?

During the uprisings of the Arab Spring it became clear that the Arab peoples saw through the lies of the anti-Israel slogans. How did this happen? Let’s analyze the case of Syria. At the turn of the century, after Hafez al-Assad died, Syria went through a deep economic change from a nationalized to a market economy. The Assad family took over the infrastructure and communications, while it left commerce to the big Sunni families. In June 2000, Hafez Assad died and his son Bashar returned from the UK with a western education. People hoped for more freedoms. At the beginning of his rule Bashar Assad allowed a degree of political openness in what was called the Damascus Spring. Within 3 months, however, it ended, and arrests of those who felt too free resumed. After the assassination of Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri in 2005, local protests and Western pressure forced Bashar Assad to retreat from Lebanon. This withdrawal affected Syria’s economy adversely, because Lebanon had been a source of bribes and smuggling for Syria’s rulers. It was a blow to Assad, who could not stop the Lebanese from throwing him out.

At the same time, opposition forces published the Declaration of Damascus. These forces included (1) the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, who accepted the democratic rules of modern states; and (2) a leftist party called the People’s Democratic Party, led by Riad Turk and independent figures well known for their opposition to the Assad regime. That was the beginning of a new independent opposition in Syria.

In the articles of Yassin Haj Saleh, written between 2006-2009 (in Syria on one foot, Arabic edition), he predicts not an uprising but an explosion, either a popular one or a religious one. He foresaw that a sectarian explosion might occur because the regime did not allow the normal development of the nation through a democratic process. He also talked about the problem of terrorism, explaining that the government applied the name “terrorist” to every form of opposition. He suggested that the government may itself have staged a series of mysterious bombings. In 2006 he talked about the influence of the internet on the people, and he spoke of poverty and the large social gaps as causes of a future social explosion.

On page 108, Haj Saleh anticipated that the marginalized people of Syria will resort either to jihad or to politics. He explained that if the regime keeps investing in oppressive security methods rather than in solutions to social problems— promoting neoliberal economics without democracy—this will be a formula for sectarian strife. In 2006, he could not predict a revolution in Syria since the country had neither political parties nor unions. Nor did external Arab forces like Saudi Arabia, Qatar or Turkey play a big role there.

When the revolution erupted in March 2011, Assad was ready to fight against his people to the last one, while Syrians believed that the West would intervene and not let it happen. The revolutionary youth rallied around the Syrian National Council (SNC), which was a natural continuation of the Damascus Declaration, consisting of the Left, the Islamic Brotherhood, and figures such as Burhan Ghalioun and George Sabra. The SNC got immediate international recognition and a seat at the Arab League. Then Saudi Arabia and Iran, the two big enemies of the Arab Spring, who fear the Muslim Brotherhood on the one hand and democracy on the other, began counter-revolutionary intervention.

Qatar, for its part, believed that if Saudi Arabia continued opposing the revolutionary wave, the rule of the Saudi royal family would be endangered. Qatar threw its support behind the Muslim brotherhood, using both money and its al-Jazeera satellite channel. Saudi Arabia saw the new, democratically elected president of Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Muhammad Morsi, as a major danger, so it staged a military coup led by the present Egyptian president Abed al-Fattah Sisi. Meanwhile, in Syria, the Saudis started pumping up Salafi and Jihadist forces like Ahrar A-Sham and al-Qaida.

Then—in November 2012— the Saudis, with the help of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, made a kind of coup in the national leadership of the Syrian opposition, putting their man, Ahmad Jerba, at the head of a new, more “representative” body called “The National Coalition of the Opposition in Syria.” In the meantime, Assad released a bunch of jihadis he had kept in his jails. He knew their expertise with weapons, and naturally they started to use them. Syria’s peaceful demonstrators now stepped aside, because from the start they had intended a peaceful revolution. During this whole period, the West held useless international conferences, expressing solidarity with the Syrian opposition but not giving any kind of material or military support.

In the summer of 2013, Assad used chemical weapons against the people of Gouta A-Sharqia near Damascus, breaching all international commitments and crossing President Obama’s famous red line. He promised to act forcefully against the Assad regime, and the Syrian people pinned their hopes on him. We in DAAM supported any action that would stop Assad from massacring his people, and we waited for Obama to act. At the very last minute, Obama decided to wait and see what British PM David Cameron would do. The rest is history. Britain’s Labor Party opposed any action, as did some of Cameron’s own Tory party, so Obama found an excuse to back off. Instead of attacking, he reached an agreement with Russia on the removal of chemical weapons from Syria, leaving the regime untouched.

At the end of 2011, Obama pulls his army out of Iraq. At that very minute, Iraqi PM Nouri al-Malaki, representing the ruling Shia majority supported by Iran, starts a wave of repression against the Sunni minority, which had begun a peaceful rebellion in the Sunni areas of Anbar province. The Americans continue to support al-Malaki. Suddenly, in June, ISIL storms Mosul, the Iraqi army vanishes into thin air, and all its expensive American arms fall into the hand of ISIL, which is run by the defrocked Baath officers of Saddam Hussein’s army. At the same time, Assad retreats from the northeastern Syrian desert, enabling ISIL to invade without resistance and declare the Syrian city of Raqqa as the capital of the Islamic State.

Where does that leave us? Assad has already destroyed Syria, its people are starving and dying, but Obama’s new strategy is to fight ISIL. After 9/11, the Americans lost faith in Saudi Arabia and opted for Iran as a more reliable partner. Iran may represent a problem in the Middle East and is a bitter rival of Israel, but it presents no threat to Europe and New York as ISIL does. Therefore, Obama signs the nuclear agreement with Iran, disregarding Israeli and Saudi opposition. The USA works with Iran in the fight against ISIL in Iraq, while Iran sides with Assad and Russia against the (by now) fundamentalist opposition supported by the Saudis and Turkey. At the same time, the Saudis fight the Iranian intervention in Yemen with low-profile American support. All this goes to show how confused American policy is in the region, and why the US is so discredited.

The protracted war in Syria was leading to the disintegration of the Syrian Army. Young people were refusing to enroll in the Army to fight a lost war, regime supporters had lost faith in the possibility of defeating the opposition. For their part, however, the Syrian refugees in Turkey understood that although Assad’s regime is weak, the opposition is not strong enough. This led to the massive emigration to Europe in summer of 2015. At that point Vladimir Putin decided to bring in his air power to save the Assad regime. Under the pretext of fighting ISIL, the Russians started bombing the Syrian Opposition, spreading destruction and killing civilians.

In the wake of the Iran nuclear agreement, the Obama administration fell in love with diplomacy. The refugee crisis in Europe, the barbarian attacks in Paris staged by ISIL, and Russia’s intervention in Syria were seen by the Obama administration as offering a golden opportunity to go for another successful diplomatic agreement in Syria. The US convened a new international gathering in Vienna, with the participation of its new partners, Iran and Russia. Here a new formula was reached, in which the demand that Assad give up power was dropped. After the Vienna talks, the UN Security Council voted unanimously for a resolution establishing a framework for negotiations, with no mention at all of Assad’s fate. Following this resolution, the Syrian opposition formed a new High Negotiations Committee (HNC) in the Saudi capital of Riad. The committee includes for the first time Jihadist formations supported by Saudi Arabia. These are now accepted as a legitimate part of the opposition forces.

At Kerry’s urging, the veteran Syrian opposition agreed to participate in a new Geneva convention to negotiate an agreement with the Assad regime, despite its disbelief that such an agreement is reachable as long as the Russians keep bombing the opposition. Meet the HNC in Riad, Kerry put an ultimatum: If you don’t go to Geneva, we will withdraw our support. Under these circumstances, the HNC decided indeed to go to Geneva, but under one very clear condition: stop the Russian bombing and stop the starvation of Syria’s besieged cities.

The present conditions are these: in Iraq a sectarian Shia government, supported by Iran and the US, is waging a war against ISIL and repressing the Sunnis. In Syria the Assad regime continues its barbaric war against democracy with the support of Russia, Iran, and the passive agreement of the Obama administration. Under these conditions there are no real prospects of “containing and defeating” ISIL, which was the aim that Obama declared more than a year ago. As long as Iraq is being ruled by a sectarian government under a religious constitution, the Sunni population will seek refuge with ISIL. And as long as Assad remains in power, ISIL will stay in northern Syria. The Russian idea that Assad is the key to a solution leads only to more carnage and more refugees. Assad must go and be held responsible for the mass murder of 250,000 civilians, the destruction of more than 2 million homes, and the displacement of more than 10 million Syrian citizens. We in DAAM support all democratic forces in Syria that agree to build a new country based on religious tolerance, democracy, and social justice.

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