Netanyahu pushing for new settlement, Palestinian officials warn
Israel PM may use election campaign to turn former Jerusalem airport into a settlement
Palestinian officials warn that Israel’s prime minister might use the fiercely fought election campaign to make a deal with right-wing Israeli parties that will include building an 11,000-unit settlement for Orthodox Jews on the runway of a former Jerusalem airport.
Israeli elections are set for March 23 and Benjamin Netanyahu has no clear path to staying in power. Palestinian Orthodox clergyman Bishop Atallah Hanna called on Palestinians to be on the watch and prevent Israelis from turning the former Qalandia Airport into a massive Jewish settlement.
Ofer Zalzberg, the Middle East program director at the Herbert Kelman Institute for Conflict Transformation, told Arab News that three weeks ago Netanyahu revived a plan for housing in the area before the elections to encourage unity among religious Zionist parties. “But he failed to secure this merger,” Zalzberg said.
“In the past, he has promised to advance construction in this area but never acted upon it.”
Ironically, the airport location was included in former US President Donald Trump’s “Peace to
Prosperity” program to benefit Palestinians.
“Israel should allow for the development by the state of Palestine of a special tourism zone in Atarot, in a specific area to be agreed on by the parties,” Zalzberg said.
Khalil Tufakji, the head of the map department at Jerusalem’s
Arab Studies Society, told Arab News that Israel has already made plans for a settlement on the airport runway, but that no official tender has been announced.
“But there is no guarantee that they will not do it if Netanyahu thinks it will serve his political ambitions or help him get out of jail,” Tufakji said.
More than half of the land is intended for the Jewish settlement, but the former Qalandia Airport is privately owned by Palestinians, according to Tufakji.
“Six hundred of the 1,200 dunums are privately owned by Palestinians, and another 20 dunums are owned by the Islamic
Waqf,” he said.
Tufakji said this is not the first time this has happened as Israelis “have previously made similar announcements in 2012 and 2017,” he added.
Jerusalem-based lawyer Daniel Seidemann, the director of the Terrestrial Jerusalem NGO, also said it is unlikely that the plan will be implemented in the near future. “I am tempted to say it will not happen anytime soon,” he said. “They have not started planning because of objective obstacles, enormous legal complication, and its proximity to Ramallah and Kufr Aqab. If it happens, it will be 10 years from now.”
There is no guarantee that they will not do it if Benjamin Netanyahu thinks it will serve his political ambitions or help him get out of jail. Khalil Tufakji
On Nov. 18, 2020, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis visited Abu Dhabi for the second time in a few months to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed.
The meeting proved historic. Greece and the UAE signed a strategic partnership agreement, including a mutual defense clause. Athens hailed it as one of the most important agreements it had signed since World War II. Bilateral cooperation on foreign policy and defense is expanding rapidly. On Sunday, Greek Defense Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos visited the UAE, accompanied by the Chief of General Staff Gen. Konstantinos Floros, to discuss deepening defense cooperation and to participate in two international defense fairs: IDEX 2021 and NAVDEX 2021. Last summer, the UAE sent F-16 fighter jets to Crete to participate in military exercises with the Hellenic Air Force.
In a further sign of growing military cooperation, Greece, the UAE, Cyprus, Egypt and France conducted from Nov. 30 to Dec. 6 a joint multinational aeronautical exercise codenamed “Medusa” in Alexandria, Egypt.
The exercise was an unofficial, although direct, message to Turkey against its muscle flexing in the eastern Mediterranean.
A joint military exercise between Greece, Cyprus, Israel, the UAE, Slovakia, Spain, Canada and the US is on the cards for later this year. “Defense cooperation is very important for Greece as far as it contributes to
two sectors — first, in increasing investment by the UAE in Greece’s defense industry, and second, in cooperation between the two countries in technology development and intelligence,” Sotiris Roussos, associate professor at the University of Peloponnese and head of the Centre for Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and Islamic
Studies, told Arab News.
“Greece can be a springboard for the development of the new leading role that the UAE aspires to play from the Gulf to Libya.”
The roots of Greek-Emirati cooperation can be traced back to the Arab Spring, which created a new dynamic from the Mediterranean to the Gulf.
Since then, Turkey has become an extremely assertive and geopolitically ambitious challenger of the regional status quo in two ways.
Firstly, it is threatening the sovereignty and sovereign rights of Greece, Cyprus and Egypt in the eastern Mediterranean by forcefully questioning either their territorial integrity, or their rights to explore and develop their national resources in their continental shelves or exclusive economic zones (EEZ).
The November 2019 memorandum of understanding between Libya’s Government of National Accord (GNA) and Turkey, which establishes a maritime boundary between the two countries while ignoring the Greek and Egyptian EEZs, is a prime example of how Ankara views the protection of its geo-economic and geopolitical interests in the region.
Secondly, Turkey poses a threat to the post-Arab Spring regional order, mainly through its support for the Muslim Brotherhood but also its presence in Syria, Libya and the Horn of Africa. Additionally, Ankara is following a strategy to exert influence in areas where it sees a power vacuum emerging.
This strategy is founded on its Mavi Vatan (Blue Homeland) doctrine, aimed at presenting Turkey as a maritime power from Libya to the Gulf.
The recent release on bail of young Indian climate activist Disha Ravi has brought some relief, but fears are growing over an increase in guilt by association towards other young Indian activists, her lawyer and other rights advocates claim.
Ravi, an Indian associate of Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, was arrested in the southern city of Bengaluru on Feb. 13 on sedition charges for distributing a document to help farmers who have been demonstrating against India’s new farm laws. Police said the manual contained action plans for organizing protest violence.
The protests of tens of thousands of farmers, who say the new laws would leave them at the mercy of big corporations, have been one of the biggest challenges faced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.
Ravi’s manual was shared on social media by Thunberg, who earlier this month faced a backlash from Indian authorities for expressing solidarity with the protesting farmers.
While a court in Delhi granted bail to Ravi on Tuesday citing “scanty and sketchy” evidence against her, other activists and the 22-year-old’s lawyer are pointing to the increasing danger of guilt by association.
“The constant gaze on who you are, what you do, there is guilt by association,” Ravi’s lawyer and family friend R. Prasanna told Arab News on Thursday.
“There is a widening gap that without any sense of discretion cases are being lodged and attempts to incarcerate people just because you don’t like somebody making the comments,” she said.
Women’s rights activist Poonam
Kaushik said that with Ravi’s case “the government is creating a sense of fear among youth and their parents.” Kaushik, secretary-general of the Progressive Women Organization, told Arab News: “The bail to Disha is a relief but the larger message that the government wants to send is that
anyone who criticizes the government will be put behind the jail.”
She added: “In the last few years, we see many people associated with human rights, civil society, academics have been put behind the bars under the draconian laws for challenging the narrative of the government.”
Data released by Delhi-based news website Article 14 earlier this month shows that the number of sedition cases during Modi’s six years in power has nearly doubled. “(Since 2010) 96 percent of sedition cases filed against 405 Indians for criticizing politicians and governments over the last decade were registered after 2014,” Article 14 reported.
Over a third of those who faced the charges made critical or derogatory remarks against Modi and other key leaders of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) party.
For Bangalore-based political analyst Prof. Sandeep Shastri, there is a larger question following the ruling in Ravi’s case.
“When the judge says that the evidence is scanty and limited, it raises the question whether dissent is going to be looked at from the lenses of what authorities see right and what they see as wrong,” he said.