Saturday, August 5, 2017

The Daily 202: Mueller impaneling a grand jury makes it more politically difficult for Trump to fire him

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), right, questions newly confirmed FBI Director Christopher Wray during his confirmation hearing last month. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

With Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve

By James Hohmann August 4

THE BIG IDEA: Last night’s news that Robert S. Mueller III has begun using a grand jury in federal court in Washington, as part of his investigation into possible coordination between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign, further boxes in the president and makes it more politically difficult to justify firing the special counsel.
-- If President Trump ever lost the support of Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), he just might be doomed. A former state House speaker, Tillis is a reliable Republican apparatchik whose vote party leadership can count on. So it was a big deal yesterday when he introduced legislation with a Democratic colleague, Chris Coons (Del.), to prevent Trump from firing Mueller without cause.
Tillis, known as a savvy political strategist, is clearly thinking ahead to what he realizes will be a very difficult reelection campaign in 2020. “It is critical that special counsels have the independence and resources they need to lead investigations,” he said in a news release.

Joined @CNN to discuss the Special Counsel Integrity Act I introduced with Senator @ChrisCoons. pic.twitter.com/vN9CIzsA3X
— Senator Thom Tillis (@SenThomTillis) August 3, 2017

The first-term senator toppled Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan in one of the nastiest and most expensive races of the 2014 midterm cycle. Trump carried the Tar Heel State last November by 4 points, and everyone expects it will be one of the key battlegrounds next time. “Our polls and others have found that Tillis has never been able to strengthen his position after going into office unpopular on the heels of winning a 'lesser of two evils' election where he got by largely based on the political climate,” said Raleigh-based Democratic pollster Tom Jensen, who runs Public Policy Polling. “The landscape is likely to be a lot different in 2020 unless things really turn around for the Trump administration, so it's wise for Tillis to take steps that might make him look like 'not just another Republican' to appeal to Democrats and independents. Democrats still have about a 10-point registration advantage in North Carolina. So some reasonable threshold of crossover support is necessary for Tillis to win, and he hasn't done a lot since getting elected that crosses across party lines. This seems like a smart stepin that direction for him.”

North Carolina’s other Republican senator, Richard Burr, has already been leading the intelligence committee’s inquest into Russian interference. And many in the state remain proud of the role that the late Sen. Sam Ervin famously played during the Watergate investigation.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) says President Trump's recent comments on Attorney General Jeff Sessions and special counsel Robert Mueller are "unnerving." (Reuters)

-- Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) introduced a separate proposal of their own yesterday to protect Mueller. “The two proposals … each seek to check the executive branch’s ability to fire a special counsel, by putting the question to a three-judge panel from the federal courts. They differ in when that panel gets to weigh in on the decision,” Karoun Demirjian explains. “Tillis and Coons’ proposal would let the firing proceed according to current regulations … but the fired special counsel would have the right to contest the administration’s decision in court. In that scenario, the judges panel would have two weeks from the day the special counsel’s case is filed to complete their review and determine whether the termination was acceptable. … Both senators, as well as Graham, said they expect they may merge their efforts after lawmakers return to Washington in September. … The lawmakers are not expecting that the president will like or support either proposal … But they say they are convinced that there is enough support to pass such a law, even over Trump’s objections.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) says President Trump's recent comments on Attorney General Jeff Sessions and special counsel Robert Mueller are "unnerving." (Reuters)

-- Just how little do Senate Republicans trust Trump at this point?Before adjourning for summer recess yesterday afternoon, the chamber agreed by unanimous consent to block the president from being able to make any recess appointments while they’re out of town.

This was done so that Trump cannot fire Jeff Sessions as attorney general and then appoint someone without Senate confirmation who would be willing to fire Mueller. Sessions recused himself from the Russia probe after not being forthcoming during his confirmation hearing about contacts he had during the campaign with the Russian government. That leaves the decision over whether to fire Mueller to the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, who says he would not do it without cause. But if Trump replaced Sessions with a new AG who was not conflicted out, that person could ax Mueller.

To head that off, GOP leaders scheduled nine “pro-forma” sessions over the next month. In other words, the Senate will be gaveled in for roughly a minute or so every three days between now and when lawmakers return after Labor Day. Legally this means that they will not be adjourned, The Hill explains.

Republicans used this same tactic last year to prevent Barack Obama from trying to put Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court with a recess appointment.

-- Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a friend of Sessions, already said last week that he would not make time in the Senate schedule to consider a new attorney general nominee.

-- There are other reasons that Sessions also appears safe for now. White House Chief of Staff John Kelly called the AG on Saturday to tell him that his job is secure, per the Associated Press. He reassured him that the president does not plan to go through with firing him, even though he just spent the better part of two weeks publicly pressuring him to resign almost every day. If Trump tried to oust Mueller, would Gen. Kelly really put his own integrity on the line and be a party to that? Or would he pack his bags?

Donald Trump speaks last night during a rally in Huntington, W.Va. (Darron Cummings/AP)

-- Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a friend of Sessions, already said last week that he would not make time in the Senate schedule to consider a new attorney general nominee.

-- There are other reasons that Sessions also appears safe for now. White House Chief of Staff John Kelly called the AG on Saturday to tell him that his job is secure, per the Associated Press. He reassured him that the president does not plan to go through with firing him, even though he just spent the better part of two weeks publicly pressuring him to resign almost every day. If Trump tried to oust Mueller, would Gen. Kelly really put his own integrity on the line and be a party to that? Or would he pack his bags?

-- Reacting to reports about the grand jury on Fox News last night, meanwhile, Trump personal attorney Jay Sekulow insisted that “the president is not thinking about firing Robert Mueller.” “So the speculation that’s out there is just incorrect,” he told Neil Cavuto.

Every time a Trump lawyer or White House official says something like that publicly, it’s harder to justify getting rid of Mueller down the road. A good case would be made that the president changed his mind because of some meaningful development in the investigation. That would look like Trump is trying to interfere with the justice system, which would further inflame public opinion against him. Again, that doesn’t mean the president would not take his chances and try such a gambit if he was really desperate. But there’s now a batch of clips like this one from Sekulow on Fox that would be difficult to explain away.

The Washington Post's Carol Leonnig explains that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigative team has requested that the White House retain records of a meeting with a Russian lawyer. (Victoria Walker, Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE GRAND JURY:

-- The Wall Street Journal’s Del Quentin Wilber and Byron Tau scooped that Mueller impaneled the grand jury several weeks ago and described it as “a sign that Mr. Mueller’s inquiry is ramping up and that it will likely continue for months”: “Before Mr. Mueller was tapped in May to be special counsel, federal prosecutors had been using at least one other grand jury, located in Alexandria, Va., to assist in their criminal investigation of Michael Flynn … That probe, which has been taken over by Mr. Mueller’s team, focuses on Mr. Flynn’s work in the private sector on behalf of foreign interests. ‘This is yet a further sign that there is a long-term, large-scale series of prosecutions being contemplated and being pursued by the special counsel,’ said University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck. ‘If there was already a grand jury in Alexandria looking at Flynn, there would be no need to reinvent the wheel for the same guy. This suggests that the investigation is bigger and wider than Flynn, perhaps substantially so.’”

-- Reuters added that the grand jury has already agreed to issue subpoenas in connection with the June 2016 meeting that included Trump's son, son-in-law and a Russian lawyer. Karen Freifeld and John Walcott did not specify who specifically got the subpoenas.

-- The Post swiftly confirmed the Journal’s reporting. Carol D. Leonnig, Sari Horwitz and Matt Zapotosky elaborate: “A White House adviser said the president and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had not received subpoenas, nor had the White House. Members of the president’s legal team met with Mueller three weeks ago to express their desire to work with his investigators. Ty Cobb, whom Trump appointed as White House special counsel, said of the grand jury: ‘This is news to me, but it’s welcome news to the extent it suggests that it may accelerate the resolution of Mr. Mueller’s work. The White House has every interest in bringing this to a prompt and fair conclusion. As we’ve said in the past, we’re committed to cooperating fully with Mr. Mueller.’

“In federal cases, a grand jury is not necessarily an indication that an indictment is imminent or even likely. Instead, it is a powerful investigative tool that prosecutors use to compel witnesses to testify or force people or companies to turn over documents.”

Carol, Sari and Matt outline four reasons Mueller might have chosen to use a grand jury in the District, instead of sticking with the one in Alexandria, Va.:

“The special counsel’s office is located in Southwest D.C. — much closer to the federal courthouse in the city ...
“Mueller also had previously worked in the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C., giving him some familiarity with the courthouse and the judges …
“Many of the potential crimes Mueller’s team is investigating would have occurred in the District, such as allegations that Trump aides or advisers made false statements in disclosure records or lied to federal agents. The Post has previously reported that Mueller is investigating whether the president tried to obstruct justice leading up to his firing of (James) Comey. …
“Others said the choice could reflect Mueller’s reputation for planning ahead and gaming out a possible trial. He could have better chances convicting aides to Trump in a city in which 90 percent of voters supported Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016.”

-- Federal investigators “have seized on Trump and his associates' financial ties to Russia as one of the most fertile avenues for moving their probe forward,” CNN’s Evan Perez, Pamela Brown and Shimon Prokupecz also reported yesterday: “Sources described an investigation that has widened to focus on possible financial crimes, some unconnected to the 2016 elections, alongside the ongoing scrutiny of possible illegal coordination with Russian spy agencies. … Even investigative leads that have nothing to do with Russia but involve Trump associates are being referred to the special counsel … The web of financial ties could offer a more concrete path toward potential prosecution than the broader and murkier questions of collusion in the 2016 campaign, these sources said. … [The] FBI is reviewing financial records related to the Trump Organization, as well as Trump, his family members, including Donald Trump Jr., and campaign associates. They've combed through the list of shell companies and buyers of Trump-branded real estate properties and scrutinized the roster of tenants at Trump Tower reaching back more than a half-dozen years. They've looked at the backgrounds of Russian business associates connected to Trump surrounding the 2013 Miss Universe pageant. CNN could not determine whether the review has included his tax returns.”

-- Meanwhile, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe told several top officials at the bureau to consider themselves “possible witnesses” in any investigation into whether Trump engaged in obstruction of justice. Vox’s Murray Waas reports: “McCabe has told colleagues that he too is a potential witness in the probe of whether Trump broke the law by trying to thwart the FBI's Russia investigation … Two senior federal law enforcement officials have told me that the new revelations illustrate why they believe the potential case against Trump is stronger than outsiders have thought. ‘What you are going to have is the potential for a powerful obstruction case,’ a senior law enforcement official said. ‘You are going to have the [former] FBI director testify, and then the acting director, the chief of staff to the FBI director, the FBI’s general counsel, and then others, one right after another. This has never been the word of Trump against what [Comey] has had to say. This is more like the Federal Bureau of Investigation versus Donald Trump.’”
-- “Flynn filed an amended federal financial disclosure report late Thursday providing new details about his contracts with the Trump presidential transition, a company connected to an Iranian American businessman, and the parent company of a data science firm that worked for the Trump campaign,” Tom Hamburger and Matea Gold report. In a letter accompanying the revised disclosure, Flynn says his initial disclosure reports were filed under “rushed circumstances,” and were not afforded customary consultation and review by White House counsel and the Office of Government Ethics, since he was no longer a White House employee at the time.

“In a previous disclosure … Flynn reported receiving nearly $68,000 in fees and expenses from Russia-related entities in 2015. In addition to the Russia-related income, Thursday’s filing showed that Flynn received at least $5,000 as a consultant to a project to build nuclear power plants in the Middle East.”
“The updated disclosure also confirms that Flynn had agreed to work with the SCL Group, at the time the British parent company of Cambridge Analytica, a data science company [was] hired by [Trump’s] campaign. One of Cambridge’s main financiers is [Robert Mercer].”
“The largest source of income disclosed is $140,000 for Flynn’s work as an adviser and consultant to Minneapolis-based NJK Holding Corp. That firm is led by Nasser Kazeminy, an Iranian-born businessman now living in the United States.” (For context, Flynn received about $28,000 from the Trump presidential transition.) “NJK funds a technology firm called GreenZone Systems to which Flynn serves as vice chairman,” Tom and Matea report. “GreenZone is led by Bijan Kian, Flynn’s business partner in Flynn Intel, a company now under scrutiny for its role in lobbying work for a Dutch-based business linked to the government of Turkey.”

-- Marc Kasowitz, the New York lawyer whose role has been downsized but continues to represent Trump in the Russia investigations, has also been retained by Sberbank — a Russian state bank being sued in federal district court in Manhattan. The New York Times’s Andrew E. Kramer reports: “The bank is being sued by a Russian businessman, Sergey P. Poymanov, who has sparred with it for years in Russian courts. ... The potential for Russia’s meddling elsewhere — in American courts — has raised concerns among Mr. Poymanov’s lawyers, who are not convinced that Mr. Kasowitz’s ties to Mr. Trump played no role in Sberbank’s choosing him."

Netanyahu alarms Palestinians with talk of land swap

After Al-Aqsa attack, Israeli PM suggests he backs controversial far-right proposal to strip citizenship rights, redraw border

Residents in Umm al-Fahm gather in 2015 to protest against the banning of the Islamic Movement (AFP)-Sheikh Raed Salah after his release from Israeli prison in January (AFP)

Palestinian citizens of Israel wave flags during a rally by the Islamic Movement on September 11, 2015 in Umm al-Fahm (AFP)-The leaders of the US, Israel and Palestine meet at Annapolis in 2007 (AFP)

Jonathan Cook-Saturday 5 August 2017

Umm al-Fahm, Palestine - Israel's crackdown on access to Al-Aqsa Mosque compound after two Israeli policemen were killed there last month provoked an eruption of fury among Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem and rocked Israel's relations with the Arab world.

Three weeks on, the metal detectors and security cameras have gone and, for now at least, Jerusalem is calmer.

But the shockwaves are still reverberating and are being felt most keenly far away in northern Israel, in the town of Umm al-Fahm. The three young men who carried out the shootings were from the town's large Jabareen clan. They were killed on the spot by police.

Umm al-Fahm, one of the largest communities of Israel's 1.7 million Palestinian citizens, a fifth of the population, had already gained a reputation among the Jewish majority for political and religious extremism and anti-Israel sentiment.

In large part, that reflected its status as the home of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, led by Sheikh Raed Salah.)

In late 2015 Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, outlawed the movement as a "terrorist" organisation, despite his intelligence agencies failing to find evidence to support such a conclusion.

More likely, Netanyahu's antipathy towards Salah's group, and Umm al-Fahm, derives from its trenchant efforts to ensure the strongest possible presence of Muslims at Al-Aqsa.

As Israel imposed ever tighter restrictions on Palestinians from the occupied territories reaching the mosque, Salah organised regular coaches to bring residents to the compound from Umm al-Fahm and surrounding communities.

Thousands attend funeral

Nonetheless, the three youths' attack at Al-Aqsa last month has served to bolster suspicions that Umm al-Fahm is a hotbed of radicalism and potential terrorism.

That impression was reinforced last week when the Israeli authorities belatedly handed over the three bodies, at judicial insistence, for burial.

Although Israel wanted the funerals as low-key as possible, thousands attended the burials.

Moshe Arens, a former minister from Netanyahu's Likud party, expressed a common sentiment this week: "The gunmen evidently had the support of many in Umm al-Fahm, and others seem prepared to follow in their footsteps."

#NOW #VIDEO The funeral of the three martyrs in Umm al-Fahm who carried out Al-Aqsa operation pic.twitter.com/mVlFzwD7EN
— Muntaser Alrefai (@muntaser_buz) July 26, 2017

Yousef Jabareen, a member of the Israeli parliament who is himself from Umm al-Fahm, said such accusations were unfair.

"People in the town were angry that the bodies had been kept from burial in violation of Muslim custom for two weeks," he told Middle East Eye.

"There are just a few extended families here, so many people wanted to show solidarity with their relatives, even though they reject the use violence in our struggle for our civil rights."

Nonetheless, the backlash from Netanyahu was not long in coming.

In a leak to Israeli television, his office said he had proposed to the Donald Trump administration in Washington ridding Israel of a region known as the "Triangle," which includes some 300,000 Palestinians citizens. Umm al-Fahm is its main city.

The Triangle is a sliver of Israeli territory, densely packed with Palestinian citizens of Israel, bordering the north-west corner of the occupied West Bank.

As part of a future peace deal, Netanyahu reportedly told the Americans during a meeting in late June, Umm al-Fahm and its neighbouring communities would be transferred to a future Palestinian state.

‘A double crime'

In effect, Netanyahu was making public his adoption of the long-standing and highly controversial plan of his far-right defence minister, Avigdor Lieberman.

This would see borders redrawn to allow Israel to annex coveted settlements in the West Bank in exchange for stripping hundreds of thousands of Palestinians of their Israeli citizenship and reassigning their communities to a highly circumscribed Palestinian state.

Jamal Zahalka, another member of the parliament, from Kafr Kara in the Triangle, said Netanyahu was supporting a double crime.

"He wins twice over," he told Middle East Eye. "He gets to annex the illegal settlements to Israel, while he also gets rid of Arab citizens he believes are a threat to his demographic majority."

Lieberman lost no time in congratulating Netanyahu for adopting his idea, tweeting: "Mr Prime Minister, welcome to the club."

Avigdor Lieberman, the architect of Netanyahu's desires (AFP)

With his leak, Netanyahu has given official backing to an aspiration that appears to be secretly harboured by many Israeli politicians and one that, behind the scenes, they have been pushing increasingly hard with Washington and the leadership of the Palestinian Authority.

A poll last year showed that nearly half of Israeli Jews want Palestinians expelled from Israel.

With Netanyahu now publicly on board, it looks suspiciously like Lieberman's role over many years has been to bring into the mainstream a policy the liberal Haaretz newspaper has compared to "ethnic cleansing".

Marzuq al-Halabi, a Palestinian-Israeli analyst and researcher at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, believes the move is designed with two aims in mind.

It leaves a "constant threat" of expulsion hanging over the heads of the minority as a way to crush political activity and demands for reform, he wrote on the Hebrew website Local Call. And at the same time it casts Palestinian citizens out into a "territorial and governmental emptiness".

Inevitably, the plan revives fears among Palestinian citizens of the Nakba, the Arabic word for "catastrophe": the mass expulsions that occurred during the 1948 war to create Israel on the ruins of the Palestinian homeland.

Jabareen observed that the population swap implied that Palestinian citizens "are part of the enemy. It says we don't belong in our homeland, that our future is elsewhere."

Backing from Kissinger

The idea of an exchange of populated land was first formalised by Lieberman in 2004, when he unveiled what he grandly called a "Separation of the Nations" programme. It quickly won supporters in the US, including elder statesman Henry Kissinger.

The idea of a land and population swap, sometimes termed "static transfer," was alluded to by former prime ministers, including Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon, at around the same time.

But only Lieberman set out a clear plan. He suggested stripping as many as 300,000 Palestinians in the Triangle of their Israeli citizenship.

Other Palestinian citizens would be expected to make a "loyalty oath" to Israel as a "Jewish Zionist state" or face expulsion to a Palestinian state. The aim was to achieve two states that were as "ethnically pure" as possible.

Jabareen noted that Lieberman's populated-land exchange falsely equated the status and fate of Palestinians who are legal citizens of Israel with Jewish settlers living in the West Bank in violation of international law.

Lieberman exposed his plan to a bigger audience in 2010, when he addressed the United Nations as foreign minister in the first of Netanyahu's series of recent governments. Notably, at that time, the prime minister's advisers distanced him from the proposal.

Internment camp

A month after Lieberman's speech, it emerged that Israeli security services had carried out secret exercises based on his scenario. They practised quelling massive civil disturbances following a peace deal that required redrawing the borders to expel large numbers of Palestinian citizens.

Behind the scenes, other Israeli officials are known to have supported more limited populated-land swaps.

Documents leaked in 2011 revealed that three years earlier the centrist government of Ehud Olmert had advanced just such a population exchange during peace talks.

Tzipi Livni, then the foreign minister, had proposed moving the border so that several villages in Israel would end up in a future Palestinian state. Notably, however, Umm al-Fahm and other large communities nearby were not mentioned.

The political sympathies between Lieberman and Livni, the latter widely seen as a peacemaker by the international community, were nonetheless evident.

In late 2007, as Israel prepared for the Annapolis peace conference, Livni described a future Palestinian state as "the answer" for Israel's Palestinian citizens. She said it was illegitimate for them to seek political reforms aimed at ending Israel's status as a "home unto the Jewish people".

Demographic reduction

The first hints that Netanyahu might have adopted Lieberman's plan came in early 2014 when the Maariv newspaper reported that a population exchange that included the Triangle had been proposed in talks with the US administration, then headed by Barack Obama.

The hope, according to the paper, was that the transfer would reduce the proportion of Palestinian citizens from a fifth of the population to 12 per cent, shoring up the state's Jewishness.

Now Netanyahu has effectively confirmed that large-scale populated-land swaps may become a new condition for any future peace agreement with the Palestinians, observed Jabareen.

At Lieberman's request in 2014, the Israeli foreign ministry produced a document outlining ways a land and population exchange could be portrayed as in accordance with international law. Most experts regarded the document's arguments as specious.

The foreign ministry concluded that the only hope of justifying the measure would be to show either that the affected citizens supported the move, or that it had the backing of the Palestinian Authority, at present headed by Mahmoud Abbas.

Anything short of this would be a non-starter because it would either qualify as "forced transfer" of the Triangle's inhabitants, a war crime, or render them stateless.

The problem for Israel is that opinion polls have repeatedly shown that no more than a quarter of Palestinians in the Triangle area back being moved into a Palestinian state. Getting their approval is likely to prove formidably difficult.

'Umm al-Fahm had six times as much land before Israel confiscated it'

- Yousef Jabareen, Palestinian-Israeli MP

Zahalka rejected claims by Israeli politicians that this was a vote of confidence from Palestinian citizens in Israeli democracy.

"Israel has made the West Bank a living hell for Palestinians, and few would choose to inflict such suffering on their own families. But it also because we do not want to be severed from the rest of the Palestinian community in Israel – from our personal, social and economy life."

Jabareen agreed. "We are also connected to places like Nazareth, Haifa, Acre, Jaffa, Lid and Ramle."

And he noted that Netanyahu and Lieberman were talking about redrawing the borders to put only their homes inside a future Palestinian state.

"Umm al-Fahm had six times as much land before Israel confiscated it. We still consider those lands as ours, but they are not included in the plan."

Recognise Jewish state

It is in this context, one where Palestinians citizens will not consent to their communities being moved outside Israel's borders, that parallel political moves by Netanyahu should be understood, said Jabareen.

Not least, it helps to explain why Netanyahu has made recognition of Israel as a Jewish state by Abbas' Palestinian Authority a precondition for talks.

Aware of the trap being laid for it, the PA has so far refused to offer such recognition. If it can be arm-twisted into agreement, Netanyahu will be in a much stronger position.

He can then impose draconian measures on Palestinians in Israel, including loyalty oaths and an end to their demands for political reform – under threat that, if they refuse, they will be moved to a Palestinian state.

At the same time, Netanyahu has been pushing ahead with a new basic law that would define Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people, rather than of Israel's entire population. The legislation's intent is to further weaken the Palestinian minority's claim on citizenship.

Netanyahu's decision to ban the Islamic Movement as a "terrorist group" also fits the picture.

'The deal is Israel takes Jerusalem and surrounding areas, and gives Umm al-Fahm and surroundings to the PA'

- Jamal Zahalka, Palestinian-Israeli MP

In a 2012 report by the International Crisis Group, a Washington and Brussels-based conflict resolution group, an official in Lieberman's party explained that one of the covert goals of Lieberman's plan was to rid Israel of "the heartland of the Islamic Movement".

Conversely, Netanyahu's Likud allies and coalition partners have been pushing aggressively to annex settlements in the West Bank.

Zahalka noted that the prime minister gave his backing last week to legislation that would expand Jerusalem's municipal borders to incorporate a number of large settlements, a move that would amount to annexation in all but name.

"The deal is Israel takes Jerusalem and its surrounding areas, and gives Umm al-Fahm and its surroundings to the PA," he said.

The pieces seem to be slowly falling into place for a populated-land exchange that would strip hundreds of thousands of Palestinians of their Israeli citizenship.

Paradoxically, the biggest obstacle may prove to be Netanyahu himself and his reluctance to concede any kind of meaningful state to the Palestinians.

IT disruption panics Gaza’s new Internet entrepreneurs
Thousands of Internet users across the Gaza Strip lost service in July, prompting fears of more disruption to come.Mohammed Asad
Young man holds up electronic tablet showing an Internet browser error stating, There is no Internet connection

Young man holds up electronic tablet showing an Internet browser error stating, There is no Internet connection

Young man sits at desk with a laptop and external monitor in front of him

Hussain Mahdi, the founder of an online retailer, is dependent on the Internet for his work.Mohammed Asad

No Internet?

Mousa Tawfiq-4 August 2017

Hussain Mahdi, 24, looked shocked. “Our lives would be paralyzed,” the young T-shirt designer said.
He has cause for concern. On 11 July, the Palestine Telecommunications Company, Paltel, announced that its main generator had broken down because of high loads and long power cuts. Tens of thousands of landline customers and some 8,000 Internet subscribers lost service because, as the company explained on its Facebook page, it was not able to import parts for its backup generators or bring in new, better ones.

Large areas of the Gaza Strip were left without IT services for 90 minutes before Gaza’s electricity company – which manages severely limited fuel availability through rolling blackouts – intervened to supply Paltel with electricity off-schedule.

On 13 July, Paltel announced that the relevant Israeli authorities granted permission for a new generator to enter Gaza, but it remains a stop-gap solution. According to the company, “dozens” of backup generators are still awaiting similar authorization without which more service disruptions are likely.

For impoverished Gaza – cut off from the rest of the world as a result of a now decade-old blockade imposed by Israel – such disruption could spell further disaster. Many Palestinians in Gaza rely on the Internet for their livelihood.

Mahdi created his T-shirt business in January with his sister Alaa, and with the help of Gaza Sky Geeks, an incubator for startups, tech innovation and education.

Under the name Izaari, the Mahdis sell T-shirts with original designs to the Saudi market.

“We won a challenge organized by Gaza Sky Geeks, and we got funds and technical help to launch our shop,” Mahdi said.

Total collapse

Now, Izaari has seven employees: four in Gaza, two designers in Egypt and a distributor in Saudi Arabia, said Mahdi. And the business is entirely dependent on the Internet. Designers post their work online and Saudi clients browse and shop on the website.

“Without Internet, I won’t be able to contact our partners in the US who are responsible for printing and shipping the products. The whole process, which usually takes five to seven days, needs the Internet,” he said.

Even with Internet, Mahdi is forced to work out of the Gaza Sky Geeks offices because of rolling electricity blackouts, leaving him without power at home for up to 20 hours a day.

The disruption on 11 July was therefore a heartstopper.

“It was a nightmare. We kept watching the news to know what was going on. It felt like we were watching our dream being destroyed,” Mahdi said. “The problem is fixed, but this may happen again at any moment.”

All Internet service providers in Gaza use Paltel’s infrastructure to reach their clients. Should Paltel’s system break down, Gaza’s communication services could completely collapse.

Orange, the second largest Internet service provider in Gaza, was also affected by Paltel’s generator failure. Osama Abu Zebida, the company’s general manager in Gaza, told The Electronic Intifada that the Orange database had been damaged and engineers were still trying to fix it.

“We informed Paltel that they must have another backup generator for their main data center, but they said the Israeli side refuses to permit any entry for their generators,” Abu Zebida said.

And without backup generators, little separates Gaza’s online capabilities from total collapse. There are three lines of defense against shutdown: normal electricity supply (which there is little of in Gaza), backup generators and a system of batteries in extreme cases.

“When the generator broke down,” said Abu Zebida, “the battery system was supposed to work for six hours, but it turned off after four due to the heavy load. Here exactly the catastrophe happened. Most of the Gaza Strip was without Internet for almost 90 minutes. That is a disaster in the world of communication.“

No Internet, no work

The small access points that connect neighborhoods to the central exchange are another problem facing Gaza’s Internet. These access points need electricity and their batteries can’t cope with long power cuts. Paltel addresses the problem by sending a technician to charge the batteries manually, but this solution isn’t effective, according to Abu Zebida.

“We’ve advised Paltel to use solar cells for their access points, but they told us they don’t have permits from the municipality.”

A spokesperson for Paltel said the company would not be making any further comments beyond those already posted on the company’s Facebook page.

But many in Gaza fear the consequences of another shutdown of the company’s services.
Hosam Salem, 29, is a freelance journalist whose photography has been published by The Electronic Intifada. “Internet is the core of my work,” he said.

When there is no Internet in his neighborhood, Salem has to go to restaurants or coffee shops to send his work and correspond. He also uses Internet services provided by Jawwal, a Palestinian mobile phone company, but this is very expensive and doesn’t work to upload pictures and videos.

“Those extra expenses are exhausting. Sometimes, I spend the night moving from one place to another in order to find an Internet connection. My work isn’t easy and such obstacles just make it more difficult,” Salem said.

Samar al-Nabaheen, 32, would also be stuck without the Internet. Three years ago, she created a Facebook pagefor dishes she cooks at home. The page proved so popular, it has since grown into Online Homemade Food, a food delivery service.

“People send their orders to my page, and I send them the food through a local delivery company,” she said, her Facebook page now boasting more than 11,700 followers.

Most of al-Nabaheen’s clients are working women who don’t have time to make food. Al-Nabaheen is struggling to meet demand, in part because she has to buy fresh produce every day from the market, as her refrigerator at home is off most of the day due to power cuts.

“Sometimes there is also no Internet during the day. And when I log in to my Facebook account during the night, I find a lot of requests and orders. I can barely answer them.”

According to al-Nabaheen, she used to send 15 orders per week, but because of the Internet and power cuts, the number is now down to 10 orders.

“I’m directly affected by Internet and electricity. If the situation gets worse, I’ll lose more of my clients.”

Mousa Tawfiq is a journalist based in Gaza.

The Downfall of Nawaz Sharif and the Triumph of Stupidity

Pakistan’s democracy is stronger with the removal of the prime minister on corruption charges. But the primacy of the armed forces remains intact.

BY MOSHARRAF ZAIDI-AUGUST 3, 2017

Yet another prime minister fell in Pakistan last week, marking the sixth elected leader to fail to serve out his five-year term since 2002. This time, it was perennial political survivor Nawaz Sharif, in his third go-round on the post. Deposed by an army general in 1999 and fired by the president in 1993, Sharif is no stranger to the political wilderness — he has braved it twice and come back stronger both times.

His latest troubles however may be decidedly more serious. The legal basis for his disqualification is being contested by his supporters on several grounds. But the core failure to disclose receivable assets from a foreign company is uncontested. Sharif may never be able to hold public office in Pakistan again.

Given Pakistan’s history of military dictatorship, there have been natural questions about what lies behind Sharif’s ouster. The fates of plenty of Pakistani prime ministers have been tragic. Founding father Liaquat Ali Khan was assassinated in 1951; Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was deposed by a military dictator and hanged in 1979; and his daughter, Benazir Bhutto, was murdered by terrorists in 2007. But Sharif’s exit isn’t tragic, unless we count hubris and incompetence as tragedy. Nor, alas, is it a blow against Pakistan’s rampant corruption.

Sharif failed to make a credible case both in the law courts and in the court of public opinion. When the Panama Papers first came out, naming members of his family as holding offshore wealth, Sharif could have plotted a course that would not only have preserved his tenure as prime minister but also secured better financial disclosure and transparency in Pakistan.

Instead, he chose a perplexing strategy of playing the victim, deploying his anointed successor (his daughter Maryam) to manage an offense-first media strategy and using surrogates to suggest to anyone who would listen that the army was once again plotting to get rid of him. Perhaps this would have been a fine approach to take in the 1990s, when leaders like Sharif enjoyed a relative monopoly over information. It was suicidal in 2016-2017, with each clumsy statement, every legal misstep, and each demonstration of haughty self-importance picked apart by Pakistani millennials, both in newsrooms and on smartphones across the country.

The case against the Sharifs was buttressed not by the evidence brought against them by petitioners involved in the case but by the incredibly incompetent presentation of facts by the Sharif family in the courts, in parliament, and in the public sphere. It wasn’t the corruption that got Sharif so much as the cover-up, and that has meant that the focus has been squarely on him and his clan — and not on plugging the holes in Pakistan’s vast and leaky public sector. Like the drama unfolding in Washington, there have been a host of supporting actors in this political thriller — including representatives of the military and intelligence services on the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) that helped unearth some of the financial dirt that has been used to tar and feather the Sharifs.

At each stage, however, the rocket fuel that powered Sharif’s crash landing was his own incompetence

At each stage, however, the rocket fuel that powered Sharif’s crash landing was his own incompetence, stemming from his original failure to properly declare his income and assets to the electoral commission. This was followed by a perplexing decision to claim victimhood, followed by comical differences between his official account and that of various relatives. A laughable effort to explain the family fortune through contacts in Middle Eastern royalty has further eroded his credibility.

But neither the Sharifs nor their tormentors in the political opposition nor the JIT has made any effort to expand the debate about how to genuinely reform the public sector. There has been no debate about ending the highly litigious culture in which the poor must suffer the burden of so-called justice while the rich often evade it. Sharif’s disqualification has everything to do with Sharif himself and the fights between him and his equally power-hungry opponents. It has little to do with wider questions of justice or fairness or corruption.

Yet there is a silver lining. While this isn’t an end to Pakistani elites’ corruption, it’s not a blow to democracy either. Sharif loyalists will be at pains to pretend that the ruling strikes at the heart of representative government. The truth is that Pakistan’s voracious and frequently interrupted democracy has sprawled and flourished in the last decade. Elements of that democracy have been on display throughout the Sharif case.

First, regulatory freedoms and technological progress have created a media that ranks as among the freest in the Muslim world and possibly beyond. Religion remains dangerous territory, but politically, virtually anything is fair game. Pakistani news channels, newspapers, and social media are rife not only with real stories of political corruption but also fake ones. The public eye in Pakistan today is an unforgiving, untiring beast that never sleeps. Some of the most relentless probing of the Sharifs did not take place in the court of law but on an array of nightly news channels — some with an anti-Sharif agenda that dates back to much before the Panama case and some borne out of a genuine disgust with the way Sharif handled the situation.

Second, the 2013 election saw the entry of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) into the country’s political mainstream. For decades, Pakistan veered dangerously toward becoming a two-party democracy in a system not built for it, with Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party and Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League. The PTI represents a valid third force in democratic Pakistan. Led by Imran Khan, a hugely popular and narcissistic former cricketing hero, the PTI has mobilized millions of young urban voters and changed the political culture for good (or bad, depending on your allegiances). It was the PTI’s pointed threat of agitation to pursue corruption allegations related to the Panama Papers leak that forced the Supreme Court to step in and tackle the case.

And that brings us to perhaps the most crucial factor — a muscular and empowered judiciary. Between 2007 and 2009, the political parties that are squabbling for power today came together to help reinstate a chief justice deposed by former military dictator Pervez Musharraf. That hard-won judicial independence has been hard at work since, with the Supreme Court going from strength to strength, activist justices being balanced out by less proactive ones, and judgments that have earned accolades at home and abroad.

In decades past, the Supreme Court might not have had the gall to dismiss a sitting prime minister; last week, the bench axed Sharif with a unanimous 5-0 verdict. Critics are now rightly calling for the same ferocious independence to be applied to cases in which other politicians are vulnerable to disqualification and in which other officeholders of the state, including judges and army officers, are held to account. But, for starters, the scalp of a prime minister with a substantial mandate is not a bad beginning.

The one oft-employed (and often legitimate) explanation for big political events in Pakistan is the machinations of the ever powerful military establishment, and Sharif’s allies are already blaming the army. But Sharif can’t pin the guilt on the generals. The military didn’t need to cut him down to size because in four years he had done very little, if anything, to challenge its primacy on important issues like India and Afghanistan. Also, the military did not fabricate the Panama Papers nor did it force the Sharifs to present a mind-numbingly poor legal defense of their ill-begotten wealth.

The fact is that while Sharif’s dismissal will no doubt cause elation among many in Pakistan’s powerful security establishment, the army had not lost any power to Sharif that it now needs to take back. In fact, his biggest flaw might not have been his poor financial reporting, or his blundering defense, but that he wasted a generational opportunity to alter the balance of power between civilians and the military. Much has changed in Pakistan since the first time Sharif was dismissed from office in 1993, but that disequilibrium remains. And as he leaves the prime minister’s residence for a third time — and almost certainly his last — Sharif has to shoulder some of the blame for that.

Photo credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images