A weighty tweet
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is threatening, Jordanian King Abdullah II is denouncing, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell is condemning, but the diplomat whose words regarding Israel’s intention to extend sovereignty over parts of the West Bank may have the most impact both in Washington and Jerusalem are those of a United Arab Emirate diplomat: Anwar Gargash.
Gargash, the UAE’s minister of state for foreign affairs, took to Twitter on Monday and called on Israel, in English, to halt its plans.
“Continued talk of annexing Palestinian lands must stop,” he wrote. “Any unilateral Israeli move will be a serious setback for the peace process, undermine Palestinian self-determination and constitute a rejection of the international and Arab consensus towards stability and peace.”
Why was this tweet by Gargash, not exactly a household name outside of the UAE, significant? Because – unlike the reactions of Abbas, Abdullah and Borrell – it was not predictable.
The ambassadors of the UAE, Bahrain and Oman were in that White House room in January when US President Donald Trump rolled out his peace plan that would grant US recognition to an Israeli extension of sovereignty over
ideological and have a more urban base, such as Antifa, fade away over time or are broken in a series of wellplanned raids. Groups that are more rural or ethnic and nationalist can also be beaten by mapping out their structure and delivering coordinated blows to their organization through large raids.
For instance, the French ignored a Breton nationalist group called the Liberation Front until 1969, when they began hunting down its members. Little groups, like the far-left Revolutionary Internationalist Action Group in southern France and Iberian Liberation Movement, faded away.
Right-wing groups seem to have the same pattern of growth and dispersion. The far-right Charles Martel Group carried out attacks in the 1970s in France. The right-wing Secret Army Organization, which opposed Algerian independence, killed some 2,000 people between 1961 and 1962. Then it faded away, and amnesty agreements allowed is leaders to move on to politics.
The lesson for the US is that domestic far-left or far-right groups can be confronted as “terrorists” and special laws drawn up to enable their detention or infiltration. For instance, the US once made the destruction of the mafia a clear goal of law enforcement.
But the US has a mixed record with going too heavily after perceived threats. Use of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in raids in the 1990s led to the disaster at Waco, Texas, where suspected cult members were besieged and numerous people died.
The FBI has put a spotlight on different domestic terrorists