Category: america

The problem with Israel…

…is that it has always wanted all of Palestine. It would seem that the attitude was is one of entitlement–the world owes them–given the Holocaust. Who would have thought that they’d treat the Palestinians as badly, as cruelly, as inhumanely. Who would have thought that world leaders would allow it. Time for this batch to level up. Here’s New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman begging Biden to push for a two-state solution.

Israel Is About to Make a Terrible Mistake
by Thomas L. Friedman
October 19, 2023

I have great admiration for how President Biden has used his empathy and physical presence in Israel to convince Israelis that they are not alone in their war against the barbaric Hamas, while trying to reach out to moderate Palestinians. Biden, I know, tried really hard to get Israeli leaders to pause in their rage and think three steps ahead — not only about how to get into Gaza to take down Hamas but also about how to get out — and how to do it with the fewest civilian casualties possible.

While the president expressed deep understanding of Israel’s moral and strategic dilemma, he pleaded with Israeli military and political leaders to learn from America’s rush to war after Sept. 11, which took our troops deep into the dead ends and dark alleys of unfamiliar cities and towns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

However, from everything I have gleaned from senior U.S. officials, Biden failed to get Israel to hold back and think through all the implications of an invasion of Gaza for Israel and the United States. So let me put this in as stark and clear language as I can, because the hour is late:

I believe that if Israel rushes headlong into Gaza now to destroy Hamas — and does so without expressing a clear commitment to seek a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority and end Jewish settlements deep in the West Bank — it will be making a grave mistake that will be devastating for Israeli interests and American interests.

It could trigger a global conflagration and explode the entire pro-American alliance structure that the United States has built in the region since Henry Kissinger engineered the end of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

I am talking about the Camp David peace treaty, the Oslo peace accords, the Abraham Accords and the possible normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The whole thing could go up in flames.

This is not about whether Israel has the right to retaliate against Hamas for the savage barbarism it inflicted on Israeli men, women, babies and grandparents. It surely does. This is about doing it the right way — the way that does not play into the hands of Hamas, Iran and Russia.

If Israel goes into Gaza and takes months to kill or capture every Hamas leader and soldier but does so while expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank — thereby making any two-state solution there with the more moderate Palestinian Authority impossible — there will be no legitimate Palestinian or Arab League or European or U.N. or NATO coalition that will ever be prepared to go into Gaza and take it off Israel’s hands.

There will be no one to extract Israel and no one to help Israel pay the cost of caring for more than two million Gazans — not if Israel is run by a government that thinks, and acts, as if it can justifiably exact its revenge on Hamas while unjustifiably building an apartheidlike society run by Jewish supremacists in the West Bank. That is a completely incoherent policy.

Alas, though, a senior U.S. official told me that the Biden team left Jerusalem feeling that while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel understands that overreach in Gaza could set the whole neighborhood ablaze, his right-wing coalition partners are eager to fan the flames in the West Bank. Settlers there have killed at least seven Palestinian civilians in acts of revenge in just the past week.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials told me, the representatives of those settlers in the cabinet are withholding tax money owed the Palestinian Authority, making it harder for it to keep the West Bank as under control as it has been since the start of the Hamas war.

Netanyahu should not allow this, but he has trapped himself. He needs those right-wing extremists in his coalition to keep himself out of jail on corruption charges.

But he is going to put all of Israel into the jail of Gaza unless he breaks with those Jewish supremacists.

Unfortunately, the senior U.S. official told me, Israeli military leaders are actually more hawkish than the prime minister now. They are red with rage and determined to deliver a blow to Hamas that the whole neighborhood will never forget.

I understand why. But friends don’t let friends drive while enraged. Biden has to tell this Israeli government that taking over Gaza without pairing it with a totally new approach to settlements, the West Bank and a two-state solution would be a disaster for Israel and a disaster for America.

We can help, we can even insist, that our Arab and European allies work to create a more effective, less corrupt and more legitimate Palestinian Authority in the West Bank that, after some transition in Gaza, could help govern there as well. But not without a fundamental change in Israeli policy toward the PA and the Jewish settlers.

Otherwise, what began as a Hamas onslaught against Israel has the potential to trigger a Middle East war with every great power and regional power having a hand in it — which would make it very difficult to stop once it started.

In the first week of this conflict, the supreme leader of Iran and Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, appeared to be keeping very tight control of their militiamen on the border with Israel and in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. But as the second week has gone on, U.S. officials have picked up increasing signs that both leaders are letting their forces more aggressively attack Israeli targets and that they might attack American targets if the United States intervenes. They smell the logic of how much an Israeli invasion of Gaza could help their goal of driving America out of the whole region.

On Thursday, a U.S. Navy warship in the northern Red Sea shot down three cruise missiles and several drones, apparently launched by the pro-Iranian Houthi militia in Yemen, that might have been headed toward Israel. More missiles, likely from pro-Iranian militias, were fired at U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria.

So many rockets are now coming from the pro-Iranian Hezbollah militia in South Lebanon that we are one degree away from a full-scale missile war between Israel and Iran’s proxies — and very possibly directly between Israel and Iran.

Israel is not likely to let Iran use its proxies to hit Israel without eventually firing a missile directly at Tehran. Israel has missile-armed submarines that are probably in the Persian Gulf as we speak. If that gets going, it’s Katie, bar the door.

The United States, Russia and China could all be drawn in directly or indirectly.

What makes the situation triply dangerous is that even if Israel acts with herculean restraint to prevent civilian deaths in Gaza, it won’t matter. Think of what happened at Gaza City’s Ahli Arab Hospital on Tuesday.

As the Israeli columnist Nahum Barnea pointed out to me, Palestinian Islamic Jihad achieved more this week with an apparently misfired rocket “than it achieved in all of its successful missile launches.”

How so? After that rocket failed and fell on the Palestinian hospital in Gaza, killing scores of people, Hamas and Islamic Jihad rushed out and claimed — with no evidence — that Israel had deliberately bombed the hospital, setting streets ablaze across the Arab world. When Israel and the United States offered compelling evidence a few hours later that Islamic Jihad accidentally hit the Gaza hospital with its own rocket, it was already too late. The Arab street was on fire, and a meeting of Arab leaders with Biden was canceled.

If people cannot talk openly and honestly about a misfired rocket, imagine what will happen when the first major Israeli invasion of Gaza begins in our wired world, linked by social networks and polluted with misinformation amplified by artificial intelligence.

That is why I believe that Israel would be much better off framing any Gaza operation as “Operation Save Our Hostages” — rather than “Operation End Hamas Once and for All” — and carrying it out, if possible, with repeated surgical strikes and special forces that can still get the Hamas leadership but also draw the brightest possible line between Gazan civilians and the Hamas dictatorship.

But if Israel feels it must reoccupy Gaza to destroy Hamas and restore its deterrence and security — I repeat — it must pair that military operation with a new commitment to pursue a two-state solution with those Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza ready to make peace with Israel.

The hour is late. I have never written a column this urgent before because I have never been more worried about how this situation could spin out of control in ways that could damage Israel irreparably, damage U.S. interests irreparably, damage Palestinians irreparably, threaten Jews everywhere and destabilize the whole world.

I beg Biden to tell Israelis this immediately — for their sake, for America’s sake, for the sake of Palestinians, for the sake of the world.

China’s repolyo strategy @Ayungin Shoal

Ano nga ba ang nakikinitang endgame ng China sa pagharang nito sa ating mga bangkang maydalang pagkain, tubig, atbp. para sa 8-man contingent ng BRP Sierra Madre, military outpost natin sa Ayungin shoal, na teritoryo natin, hindi ng China.

Noong 2013, a year after the Scarborough scandal, ito ang sabi ng isang Maj. Gen. Zhang Zhaozhong ng China’s People Liberation Army kay Jeff Himmelman ng New York Times Magazine.

He described a “cabbage strategy,” which entails surrounding a contested area with so many boats — fishermen, fishing administration ships, marine surveillance ships, navy warships — that “the island is thus wrapped layer by layer like a cabbage.”

… Of taking territory from the Philippines, he said: “We should do more such things in the future. For those small islands, only a few troopers are able to station on each of them, but there is no food or even drinking water there. If we carry out the cabbage strategy, you will not be able to send food and drinking water onto the islands. Without the supply for one or two weeks, the troopers stationed there will leave the islands on their own. Once they have left, they will never be able to come back.”

Dagdag pa ni Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, director of Asia-Pacific programs at the U.S. Institute of Peace:

Nothing in China happens overnight. Any move you see was planned and prepared for years, if not more. So obviously this maritime issue is very important to China.” https://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2013/10/27/south-china-sea/index.html

Fast forward to 2023. According to the AFP’s early July air patrols, there was a swarm of more than 50 Chinese “fishing” vessels in the vicinity of Sabina Shoal, not far from Ayungin. Na nadagdagan pa noong August 5, nang i-water-cannon ang ating Coast Guard.

In the Aug. 5 incident, there were additionally some 12 Chinese militia vessels aside from the six Chinese Coast Guard  ships in the area, according to AFP Western Command chief Vice Admiral Alberto Carlos. “These fishing vessels are really militia… they seem to be working (and) taking orders from the Chinese Coast Guard.” https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2023/08/11/2287783/afp-eyes-maritime-militia-wps 

Five days after the water-cannon affront, the West Philippine Sea was still aswarm with mostly Chinese vessels.

CARLOS. … as far as the entire WPS, based on our last monitoring, close to 500 or more than 400. But that is just an estimate because there might be duplication of sightings,” he said.

Last monitoring was just yesterday on August 10, in Mischief Reef alone, there were 191. Around 85 percent are Chinese vessels,” he added.

Ito na mismo ang repolyo strategy at work: pinapalibutan, binabakuran, ng China ang Ayungin ng sapinsaping mga bangka at barko  ng mga mangingisda kuno, pero marine surveillance ships at navy warships sa totoo.  Layers of boats and ships pretending to be loaded with  fishermen, na papalapit nang palalapit sa BRP Sierra Madre. Ang goal ay malinaw: ma-takeover ang Ayungin nang walang putukan, as in, takutan lang, with water cannons and laser threats and the like. Gray zone tactics that the U.S deems below the threshold of military warfare.

‘Ika ni Ray Powell, director of SeaLight at the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford University:

… China operate[s] in the “gray zone” by carrying out actions just below what might be considered acts of war but that achieve the same result — Beijing gaining territory or control without firing a shot.

… The Sierra Madre is visibly rusting away, it is becoming structurally unsound. At some point it will begin to breakup and otherwise become uninhabitable.  At which point china’s strategy works because all they have to do then is sort of ‘rescue’ the poor Philippine sailors off the shoal because they’re the only people around.

And then they will control the shoal.

Unless something changes, that is what will happen. It’s just a matter of when it will happen.

WHAT NOW

Matagal nang pahirapan ang pagpaparating ng supplies at repair materials sa BRP Sierra Madre. Ang tanong ngayon: Is China revving up for a full-court press kumbaga, as in, wala nang supplies na palulusutin?

Ayon kay Manny Mogato ng PressOne:

China has been waiting for the ship [BRP Sierra Madre] to collapse but the Philippines has been trying to save it by reinforcing it with cement and steel.

On Aug. 5 … The Chinese Coast Guard accused the Philippines of bringing in construction materials to BRP Sierra Madre, blocking the boats and using a water cannon to prevent the vessels from getting near BRP Sierra Madre.

One of the wooden boats made it though. The shallow waters around BRP Sierra Madre prevented the large Chinese vessels from following it. The other boat left after evading too much pressure from the water cannon.

Sa palagay naman ni Alex Magno ng PhilStar:

This [Aug 5] incident is not an accidental one.

This will be the standard Chinese tactic from hereon. They will try to disrupt every resupply mission, hoping that we eventually throw up our arms and decide it is too costly to maintain that small detachment on Ayungin.

China has initiated a severe test of wills. They will continue to cram the waters they claim with Coast Guard and “militia” vessels. All these prowling vessels will try to intercept every Filipino vessel that moves into what they claim is their territory.

At heto ang reaction ni Ex-Foreign Affairs Sec., now PH Ambassador to the UK, Teddy Locsin sa August 10 pahayag ni AFP Chief of Staff Romeo Brawner Jr. na balak ng gobiyernong mag-deploy ng naval reservists sa West Ph Sea.

TEDDY LOCSIN. We’re gonna need gunboats—more of ours out there, the higher risk of misencounter triggering the Mutual Defense Treaty—and ending its vacuities. Brawner is right; we gotta be all over the arena so our only military ally knows it isn’t a shadow play. A war for real is coming. 

Yes. A war for real. Without shades of gray. Because Ayungin is ours, #AtinAngAyungin, no ifs or buts.

*

A Game of Shark and Minnow

‘Little blue men’: Is a militia Beijing says doesn’t exist causing trouble in the South China Sea?

AFP eyes maritime militia in WPS 

Philippines should take action vs. China’s ‘gray zone’ tactics —experts 

Water cannon incident confirms Chinese fishing vessels are militia – WESCOM 

‘Creeping invasion’ — Walk the talk, Gibo tells China 

Scarborough Shoal and the Spratlys in ancient maps

Between America and China…

Scarborough Shoal and the Spratlys in ancient maps

A timely reminder given the now very convoluted discourse about China because of our renewed, refreshed, “special relationship” with the US.

The frame of reference for the 1900 Treaty of Washington’s definition of the Philippine territory was the Murillo Velarde map, which included the Spratlys and the Scarborough Shoal, But still, China’s position is that Philippine territory is limited to the islands enclosed by the polygonal lines drawn in the 1898 Treaty of Paris. Justice Carpio said that China did not participate in the Arbitral proceedings, but “by officially submitting its Position Paper to the Arbitral Tribunal, China expressly and formally recognized that Philippine territory is defined by three treaties, including the 1900 Treaty of Washington… China is forever estopped from claiming that Philippine territory is limited to the islands enclosed by the Treaty of Paris.” 

By AMELIA H.C. YLAGAN  

. . . . Justice Carpio, who was the guest of honor and main speaker at the Alliance Française, said “the 1734 Murillo Velarde map is a living document because it determines Philippine territory today, that is, Philippine territory cannot be determined without this map.” This oldest Philippine map of “Las Yslas Filipinas” is the official Spanish Government map showing Philippine territory during the Spanish regime. It shows Panacot (Scarborough Shoal) and Los Bajos de Paragua (the Spratlys) as part of Philippine territory, Justice Carpio said. None of these islands drawn in this Murillo Velarde map appeared in China’s maps from centuries ago.

“The map debunks once and for all, the Chinese historical narrative that China has owned the South China Sea for 200 years. Now the world knows better. Thanks to the definitive ruling of the Arbitral Tribunal, China’s historical narrative has been exposed as fake news. The map proves, beyond any shadow of doubt, that Spratlys and Scarborough Shoal were part of the Philippine territory as early as 1734,” Justice Carpio had said at a lecture at the Ateneo de Manila University in 2017.

At the Alliance Française opening, Justice Carpio explained that the aggressiveness of China in claiming the Spratlys and Scarborough Shoal started with the 1898 Treaty of Paris, after the Spanish-American war, when Spain ceded to the United States the archipelago known as the Philippine Islands in exchange for $20 million to ratify the Treaty. Spain might have missed the Spratly Islands and Scarborough Shoal, putting these outside the western side of the polygonal lines of the Philippines in the Treaty of Paris.

But the United States noticed the exclusion, and demanded a revision of the map for the revised treaty, called the 1900 Treaty of Washington, which provided that “Spain relinquishes to the United all title and all claim of title, which she may have had at the time of the conclusion of the Treaty of Peace of Paris, to any and all islands belonging to the Philippine Archipelago, lying outside the lines described in Article III of that Treaty and particularly to the islands of Cagayan (Mapun), Sulu and Sibutu and their dependencies, and agrees that all such islands shall be comprehended in the cession of the Archipelago as fully as if they had been expressly included within those lines.”

The frame of reference for the 1900 Treaty of Washington’s definition of the Philippine territory was the Murillo Velarde map, which included the Spratlys and the Scarborough Shoal, But still, China’s position is that Philippine territory is limited to the islands enclosed by the polygonal lines drawn in the 1898 Treaty of Paris. Justice Carpio said that China did not participate in the Arbitral proceedings, but “by officially submitting its Position Paper to the Arbitral Tribunal, China expressly and formally recognized that Philippine territory is defined by three treaties, including the 1900 Treaty of Washington… China is forever estopped from claiming that Philippine territory is limited to the islands enclosed by the Treaty of Paris.”

It was only in 1947 that China started to claim the Spratlys, Justice Carpio said. Scarborough Shoal appears in a 1948 Chinese map, named Si-ka-ba-luo, a Chinese transliteration of the English name Scarborough, The shoal was named by Captain Philip D’Auvergne, whose East India Company ship East Indiaman Scarborough grounded on one of the rocks on Sept. 12, 1784, before sailing on to China although it already had a Spanish name recorded in the 1734 Murillo Velarde map of Spanish Philippines (W. Gilbert [1804] A New Nautical Directory for the East-India and China Navigation .., pp.480-482).

The Carta Hydrographica y Chorographica de las Islas Filipinas, the Murillo Velarde 1734 map is indeed the “Mother of all Philippine Maps,” a “Living Document” to history, as Justice Carpio says.

Filipinos thank Justice Antonio Carpio for his unrelenting fight for Philippine territory and maritime sovereignty in the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea).

We thank Former Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Ambassador Albert del Rosario, who had fought together with Justice Carpio for Philippine rights on the seas. Ambassador del Rosario, 83, passed away on April 18. May he rest in peace.

Between America and China…

I was anti-bases in the hey(Joe)days of Subic and Clark; there were no threats then to our waters and borders atbp.  Some 20 years later China has grown into a bully of a hegemon hereabouts, with a foreign policy of aggression and expansion, encroaching on and creating artificial islands in our waters, driving our fisherman away, refusing to abide by fair and civilized rules.

So I’m just glad that America is finally coming to the rescue, even if only incidentally, their larger concern being to keep democratic ally Taiwan from falling into the clutches of communist China.  I dare say, better the devil we know than the devil we don’t. At least we speak the same language as America, we know exactly (okay, more or less) what they’re up to, whether or not they do right by us. We cannot say the same of China, given the authoritarianism and censorship, the language barrier and (what Andrew Masigan) labels the “two-faced diplomacy.”

If China goes ahead as promised, despite America’s “deterrent” strategy, and war breaks out over Taiwan, yes, we would likely be in China’s crosshairs, but, hey, aren’t we there already anyway?

Readings

Out of our comfort zone and into the ‘gray zone’ by Moira G. Gallaga

The Aquino-Marcos one-two punch by Segundo Eclar Romero

Oaf by Alex Magno

Protecting PH sovereignty and territory by MG Gallaga

Expanded Edca: Benefit or liability?  by MG Gallaga

China’s two-faced diplomacy by Andrew J. Masigan

Playing with the big boys by MG Gallaga