Middle East and North Africa

Egypt

  • Israel
    Netanyahu, Sisi, Obama and the United Nations Resolution on Israeli Settlements
    The United Nations Security Council was scheduled to vote today (Thursday, December 22) on an Egyptian-sponsored resolution on Israeli settlement activity. Egypt, the Arab representative on the Security Council right now, pulled the resolution this morning, so there will be no vote. There are several mysteries here, including why Egypt did that, and how President Obama planned to vote: yes, abstain, or veto. First, it’s important to realize just how bad the resolution was. Here’s part: The Security Council--   ■ "Reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution."   ■ "Reiterates its demand that Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem." ■ "Calls upon all States, to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967."   Why is this so bad? The first paragraph above calls all settlement activity illegal under international law. That could have an impact in Europe and elsewhere in how Israeli settlers and officials are treated. Are they all criminals? Can they be brought before the International Criminal Court? Prosecuted in local courts? The second paragraph refers to East Jerusalem, and suggests that all Israeli housing construction must stop--even including construction in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. That’s madness. The third paragraph above, treating everything beyond the old "Green Line" or 1949 armistice line as illegal and demanding that all states do so, begs for boycotts. It logically means that any product from East Jerusalem, the Golan, or the West Bank be boycotted and prevented from being sold. So it would be a terrible, unfair, unbalanced resolution and one with the potential to damage Israel. That’s one reason an American veto should have been automatic--but it wasn’t. The Obama administration refused to say whether it would veto, and I’ve been told by some well-informed journalists that it would not have vetoed. This would have been Mr. Obama’s parting shot after eight years of tension with Israel. Refusal to veto would also have violated decades of American policy that calls for direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations as the only way forward to peace. The President-Elect recognized this, and Mr. Trump said   The resolution being considered at the United Nations Security Council regarding Israel should be vetoed. As the United States has long maintained, peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians will only come through direct negotiations between the parties and not through the imposition of terms by the United Nations. This puts Israel in a very poor negotiating position and is extremely unfair to all Israelis.   I had actually thought Mr. Obama would veto, because a refusal to do so would certainly do damage to his party--a party that has suffered electoral defeats at the congressional and state level throughout his presidency. But if the information I received was right, he was more interested in departing with another smack at Israel. The remaining question is why President Sisi withdrew the resolution. Press reports all say it was Israeli pressure, which is a negative way of saying he did so because he values Egyptian-Israeli bilateral relations and was asked to pull the resolution by Prime Minister Netanyahu. That’s a good thing; the United States should itself value cooperative Israeli-Egyptian relations. Others have suggested that Sisi wanted to avoid a confrontation with the incoming Trump administration, which was clearly against this text. That’s also a good thing. But note this: none of the news stories suggest the Egyptians acted because of the Obama administration. Just as with the Russian-Turkish-Iranian meeting to discuss Syria (The New York Times’s story began "Russia, Iran, and Turkey met in Moscow on Tuesday to work toward a political accord to end Syria’s nearly six-year war, leaving the United States on the sidelines...."), the Obama administration apparently played no role in Egypt’s decisions. In large part this is because the Obama administration has left friends confused as its objectives and foes without fear of consequences for opposing the United States. Defenders of the administration will say it’s just lame duck status that explains the lack of concern for the wishes of the White House, but I can’t agree. At the very end of the George W. Bush administration, there was a vigorous negotiation in the Security Council over a resolution on the fighting in Gaza, and the United States was at the center of it--right up into January, 2009. Now it’s December, 2016 and we are being ignored. That’s the result of eight years of policy choices, not lame duck status.    
    Blog Post by Elliott Abrams December 22, 2016 Pressure Points
  • Egypt
    Weekend Reading: Egypt’s Church Bombing, Jihadi Street Art, and Saudis Go to the Track
    Reading selections for the weekend of December 16, 2017.
    Blog Post by Steven A. Cook December 16, 2016 From the Potomac to the Euphrates
  • Terrorism and Counterterrorism
    Violence for Violence’s Sake
    The perpetrators of the attacks this weekend in Egypt and in Turkey murdered people because that is what they do.
    Blog Post by Steven A. Cook December 13, 2016 From the Potomac to the Euphrates
  • Tunisia
    Weekend Reading: Tunisian Economics, Assad and the Jihadis, and Palestinians in Egypt
    Reading selections for the weekend of December 9, 2016.
    Blog Post by Steven A. Cook December 9, 2016 From the Potomac to the Euphrates
  • Sub-Saharan Africa
    Development of The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
    This is a guest post by Caila Glickman, volunteer intern for the Council on Foreign Relations’ department of Global Health. Caila is currently a pre-med student at Oberlin College studying chemistry and international relations. Her interests are in medicine, environmental science, and international law. In a vicious dispute over water allocation of the Nile River, Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan are wading through uncharted waters of international law. The dispute begins in Ethiopia’s attempt to regain control of its contributory river, the Blue Nile, by building the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). However, the dam’s legality is being questioned by both Egypt and Sudan—two downstream Nile states eager to maintain the status quo of water allocation. Many believe the Nile River is sourced in Egypt, but it actually stretches from Burundi to the Mediterranean Sea. Egypt receives well over half of the river’s water because the river flows north; however, its two biggest feeders—the White Nile and the Blue Nile—are located in Uganda and Ethiopia, two southern but upstream Nile states with limited access to the Nile’s water. Historically, Egypt and Sudan have exploited the Nile through exclusive treaties that failed to include the upstream countries such as Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, and Rwanda. The main treaty, known as the 1959 Nile Waters Agreement, called for the unimpeded flow of Nile waters, but only included Egypt and Sudan in its negotiations and ratification. Egypt uses this treaty to object to the construction of the GERD. Sudan has essentially piggybacked off of Egypt’s objections, as the current system of water allocation benefits the Sudanese. Ethiopia’s right to the dam lies in the Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA), which was adopted by Nile Basin Initiative member states, or all states that have some claim to the Nile. The CFA says that each Nile state is, “entitled to a reasonable share in the beneficial uses of water resources of the Nile system.” Ethiopia, a contributor of over 86 percent of the Nile River’s flow, receives only 5 percent of the Nile’s water, which is not enough to kick start its development. An electricity deficiency currently ails upstream Nile states and stifles their economic growth capability with constant power shortages. Ethiopia sees the GERD as the answer to the country’s stifling electricity issues. This dam will be used to create the continent’s largest hydropower plant that will fill all demand, generating three times the country’s current electricity production and providing neighboring states with all surplus power. Within the GERD dispute context, the greater issue at hand becomes clear—current international law does not reflect the less-developed riparian countries’ rights to water. In fact, many are cheated out of their water and the power it gives them to develop. As Zadig Abraha, deputy director of the dam’s public mobilization office, said, “To regain our lost greatness, to divorce ourselves from the status quo of poverty… we need to make use of our natural resources, like water.” The dam is a declaration of the country’s determination to pull itself up by its bootstraps. Ethiopia has convinced Egypt and Sudan to sign a declaration of principles that approved dam construction under the condition that studies be done to assess the impact the project will have on Egypt and Sudan. Despite this compromise, the issue will be continually present as developing countries around the world seek to reclaim their water rights to the dismay of developed countries banking on their silence.
    Blog Post by Guest Blogger for John Campbell December 7, 2016 Africa in Transition
  • Tunisia
    Weekend Reading: Tunisia’s Saints, Egyptians React to the U.S. Election, and the Battle for Mosul Pictured
    Reading selections for the weekend of November 18, 2016.
    Blog Post by Steven A. Cook November 18, 2016 From the Potomac to the Euphrates
  • Egypt
    Egypt’s Economic Reform: The Good and the Bad
    Tough economic times are likely to be Egypt’s reality for a while, despite the announcement that Egypt and the International Monetary Fund have agreed to a much-needed $12 billion loan.
    Blog Post by Steven A. Cook November 14, 2016 From the Potomac to the Euphrates
  • Egypt
    Thinking About Culture and the Middle East
    Can observers incorporate culture into their analyses of the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy toward the region?
    Blog Post by Steven A. Cook October 24, 2016 From the Potomac to the Euphrates
  • Egypt
    Egypt’s Nightmare
    Egypt's Dangerous War on Terror.
    Blog Post by Steven A. Cook October 19, 2016 From the Potomac to the Euphrates
  • Syria
    Weekend Reading: Syria’s Trauma, Tunisia’s Sayings, and Egypt’s Economic Woes
    Reading selections for the weekend of October 7, 2016.
    Blog Post by Steven A. Cook October 7, 2016 From the Potomac to the Euphrates
  • Israel
    Weekend Reading: Shimon Peres, Egypt’s Ultras, and the Kurds of Iran
    Reading selections for the weekend of September 30, 2016.
    Blog Post by Steven A. Cook September 30, 2016 From the Potomac to the Euphrates
  • Morocco
    Weekend Reading: Morocco’s Amazigh, Istanbul’s Rent, and the Teacher of al-Minya
    Reading selections for the weekend of September 23, 2016.
    Blog Post by Steven A. Cook September 23, 2016 From the Potomac to the Euphrates