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.

Sierra Madre stays, Recto Bank ready for drilling

Looking back on my blogposts on China, I found in this one “our china relations, our u.s. alliance” a quote from Rodel Rodis‘s “What did Erap and GMA promise China?” (originally posted 9 years ago, sometime 2014, last edited 14 March 2021):

… on March 17, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei revealed in a press conference in Beijing that two previous Philippine presidents had made an “unequivocal commitment to China ”that the Philippines would tow away the Sierra Madre from the Ayungin Shoal. China demanded that Pres. Aquino “heed the promises” made by his predecessors otherwise, Hong Lei warned, the Philippines risks losing its “credibility”.

Fastforward to August 2023 when, upon China’s “reminder” that the Philippines had promised to tow away the BSP Sierra Madre from Ayungin, the question was, who made such an “unequivocal commitment”? Not Erap, said Sen. Jinggoy Estrada. Not me, said GMA.

Easy to believe them and disbelieve China that is known to make false claims especially about Philippine territory.  Jarius Bondoc suggests we move on, start drilling for gas and oil sa Recto Bank, now na, before Malampaya dries up.

Drill Recto gas, oil now for our national survival
Jarius Bondoc

Pointless to speculate which of two pro-China presidents promised to remove BRP Sierra Madre from Ayungin Shoal. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. already rescinded such deal, if it existed at all.

Just drill oil and gas at Recto (Reed) Bank. Do it now, or suffer economic collapse.

Malampaya offshore gas field will dry up by next year; 2027 at the latest. It fuels 40 percent of Luzon’s electricity. With no replacement for Malampaya, Luzon will suffer daylong blackouts.

That’ll be disastrous. Factories, offices, shops, telecoms, trains, schools, hospitals, hotels, restaurants, cinemas, churches will close. No work or classes from home either. Foreign investors will leave. Jobs will vanish. Urbanites will flee to provinces for scarce food. Linked to Luzon, even Visayas’ power grid will be disrupted.

Recto has proven reserves. In 2013 the US Energy Information Administration estimated it to hold 5.4 billion barrels of oil and 55.1 trillion cubic feet of gas. That’s 63.5 times more oil and 20.5 times more gas than Malampaya, whose lifespan is only 24 or so years.

“We’ve long known that,” says Benny Gan, retired petroleum geologist of the Department of Energy’s precursor, Office of Energy Affairs. In the 70’s OEA explored Recto’s Sampaguita field, only 250 feet deep. “It’s the main study in a roomful of reports, photos and videos.”

Recto is 120 miles from Palawan, well within the Philippines’ 200-mile exclusive economic zone. It’s 650 miles from Hainan, China’s nearest province, thus outside its EEZ. The Hague arbitral court affirmed that in 2016. China can’t claim it by imagined “nine-dash line.”

Although China snubbed the hearings, it’s bound by The Hague ruling under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Its state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp. has no right to drill there.

CNOOC cannot subcontract to private exploration firms, retired Supreme Court justice Antonio Carpio says. Shell, Occidental, Exxon, among others, are bound by international law, so will shun CNOOC.

The Philippine government has long awarded Service Contract-72, covering Recto. Manuel V. Pangilinan’s PXP Energy Corp. and subsidiary Forum Energy Ltd. are ready to drill.

Trespassing Philippine EEZ, Chinese gunboats chased Forum’s vessels away several times. In 2020 the Duterte admin contemplated joint exploration with CNOOC. Talks failed as CNOOC’s terms violated Philippine Constitution.

Forum remobilized foreign partners to drill. President Rody Duterte stopped it after receiving a call from Beijing, Carpio recounts. “Twice Forum lost millions of pesos in false starts. Let it proceed now under Philippine Navy protection. National survival depends on it.”

Beijing anticipates drilling resumption. Its naval and coast guard ships, reinforced by maritime militia trawlers, are massing up at Del Pilar (Iroquois) Reef at Recto’s westside. Same at Escoda (Sabina) Shoal eastside. It wants to drive away the beached BRP Sierra Madre from Ayungin (Second Thomas) Shoal inside Recto.

Defy China. “Let’s do it the way Malaysia and Indonesia did two years ago,” Carpio proposes.

Beijing also claims Malaysia’s EEZ and Indonesia’s Natuna Isles. Invoking our Hague ruling as support, Malaysia held naval exercises with the US and Australia while drilling oil nearby. Indonesia invited a US aircraft carrier to sail by while drilling in Natuna.

On both occasions Beijing shrieked about owning the entire South China Sea by historical right. Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta ignored it. They’re reaping benefits from their petroleum resources, Carpio notes.

The Philippines can install rigs while holding drills with the US Navy under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement. As well, with the British Admiralty because Forum was incorporated in London. A petroleum-sufficient Philippines will ease world demand and prices.

Beijing will avoid military confrontation, Carpio calculates. An attack on Filipino government vessels escorting Forum drillers will trigger the Phl-US Mutual Defense Treaty. China Communist Party’s National Congress and Politburo have decided to take control of SCS by intimidation, not war.

“Oil and gas from Recto will save our economy,” Carpio says. “Let Beijing howl. We’ll have our fuel. What better way to assert our EEZ sovereign rights!”

Sampaguita field can pump petroleum via pipeline 150 kilometers northeast to Malampaya. The latter can in turn pump to Batangas in mainland Luzon via its existing 504-kilometer pipeline.

“If not for us circling Malampaya, China would have annexed it long ago,” a ranking PN officer confides. In 2020 a Chinese warship aimed weapons at a PN patrol there. “We’re ready to defend Recto too,” another admiral assures.

Upon operationalizing Sampaguita, other sovereignty measures can follow:

• Erect an Ayungin lighthouse to replace disintegrating Sierra Madre. The 2002 ASEAN-China Declaration of Conduct among SCS disputants bars military buildup. A civilian lighthouse is allowable, says geopolitics expert Renato de Castro, PhD.

• Sue China for damages at The Hague or the International Tribunal for Law of the Sea. The Philippines and Forum can compute opportunities lost from China’s menacing since 2007, says international maritime lawyer Jay Batongbacal, PhD.

• Exact recompense for China’s fish poaching and destruction of reef resources, like rare metals and new medicines, at Escoda, Del Pilar and Recto. Also, for concreting nearby Panganiban (Mischief) Reef into an island-fortress since 1992.

The late foreign secretary Albert del Rosario had totaled it at $662 million per year. Assisting him, marine scientist Deo Florence Onda, PhD, calculated the wrecked resources at $353,429 per hectare per year, based on the 2012 Studies on Global Ecosystems by Dutch firm Elsevier, world leader in scientific-technical-medical information.

Ninoy & the Marcoses #40years

On this 40th death anniversary of Ninoy Aquino, it was good to wake up to these words from President Marcos Jr., even if only for the record.

I stand united with all Filipinos worldwide in commemorating the Ninoy Aquino Day. By standing for his beliefs and fighting for battles he deemed right, he became an example of being relentless and resolute for many Filipinos.

In our purposive quest for a more united and prosperous Philippines, let us transcend political barriers that hamper us from securing the comprehensive welfare and advancement of our beloved people.

What’s interesting is that the article ends with a video clip of a BBM interview by Anthony Taberna (date unknown) titled “Did your father order Ninoy killed? No, says Bongbong”.

Not surprising naman that Marcos Jr. said no, his father did not order the killing, not to his knowledge anyway. What surprises really is his pahabol.

BBM. … Nung nakuha namin yung balita we were having… Sunday yon, nagla-lunch kami, and habang kumakain kami, tinawag siya sa telepono. Pagbalik niya, sabi niya, pag-uwi ni Ninoy, binaril siya. … Siguradong magkakagulo.

For the record din lang, all documented accounts have it that Marcos was then very sick after a failed kidney transplant and was confined in the Palace Guest House that had been transformed into an “impromptu hospital.” Si Imelda naman was about to have lunch with Chitang Nakpil, JV Cruz, and others at the Gloria Maris @ the CCP complex when she got the call from Gen. Ver about the killing and forthwith they all rushed to the Palace.

In August 2004 it was Imee Marcos who reminded that it was “a known fact that my father was extremely ill that time” when Ninoy was assassinated.  Which was to insist that Marcos could not have ordered the killing because he was too sick, but which does not necessarily mean that he didn’t have anything to do with it, considering that it was members of Fabian Ver’s AFP that were found guilty of the double murder.

In any case, this could also be just another He-said-She-said drama that the sibs like to engage in, probably meant only to muddy the waters some more. So what else is new.

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…