Driving along the Jordan River Valley in the Occupied Palestine Territory (OPT) of the West Bank is a stunning experience. The road is officially called Highway 90. The arable and irrigated land along this road is held militarily and illegally by Israeli settlers, many of whom are not actually Israeli citizens, but residents from the Jewish diaspora. A United Nations Commission report published in 2022 showed that this settlement activity is a crime against international human rights law (transfer of population into an occupied territory). Israeli settlers and the Israeli military that defend them call Highway 90 Derekh Gandhi or Gandhi’s Road. When I first drove along that road over a decade ago, I was puzzled by Gandhi’s name there. Mahatma Gandhi was a leader of the Indian freedom struggle, and had on many occasions—such as in his 1938 article, “The Jews”—offered his sympathy and solidarity with the Palestinian people. In fact, the road that slices through the West Bank—a crucial part of a proposed Palestinian state—is named after Rehavam Ze’evi, who was ironically given the nickname Gandhi.

Ze’evi led the National Union party, which brought together all the most dangerous currents of Israeli far-right politics. As the leader of this party, and, before that, of Moledet, Ze’evi advocated the removal of Palestinians from what he considered to be Israel’s land (East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank). He supported the creation of Eretz Yisrael that would stretch from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. In March 2001, Ze’evi—who would later be accused of sexual harassment and of being involved in organized crime—told The Guardian that “it’s not murder to get rid of potential terrorists, or those who have blood on their hands. Each one eliminated is one less terrorist for us to fight.” A few months later, Ze’evi showed that he did not distinguish among Palestinians, calling all of them a “cancer” and saying, “I believe there is no place for two peoples in our country. Palestinians are like lice. You have to take them out like lice.” He was shot to death by fighters of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in October 2001. The name of the road that cuts across the West Bank—promised to a Palestinian state in the Oslo Accords of 1993—still bears Ze’evi’s name.

Ze’evi was assassinated by PFLP fighters because the Israeli army had killed their leader Mustafa Ali Zibri by firing two cruise missiles at his home in Al-Bireh (Palestine). The assassination of Zibri was not an isolated incident. It was part of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to “cause the collapse” of the Palestinian Authority—created to manage the Oslo Accords—and “send them all to hell.” Apart from the murder of civilians on a punctual basis, from July 2001 the Israeli government killed four political leaders (Islamic Jihad leader Salah Darwazeh and Hamas leader Jamal Mansour in July, and then Hamas leader Amer Mansour Habiri and Fatah leader Emad Abu Sneineh in August). After the killing of Zibri, the Israelis assassinated Hamas’s Mahmoud Abu Hanoud in November. “Whoever gave a green light to this act of liquidation,” wrote military correspondent Alex Fishman in Yediot Ahronot, “knew full well that he is thereby shattering in one blow the gentleman’s agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority; under that agreement, Hamas was to avoid in the near future suicide bombings inside the Green Line [Israel’s pre-1967 borders].”

Hot Violence, Cold Violence

For centuries, Palestinian Christians, Muslims, and Jews lived side-by-side in the lands that would eventually be Israel and the OPT, including along the Jordan River Valley. Since the expulsion of the Palestinian Christians and Muslims and the arrival of European Jews, the legal apparatus—or the “cold violence,” as the writer Teju Cole calls it—worked alongside paramilitary and military violence against the Palestinians to create a fantasy of an ethno-nationalist state project (the Jewish State, as it was then called). The erasure of the non-Jewish Palestinians was key to this project, either by massacres (Deir Yassin in 1948) or the wholesale removal of the Palestinian population from their land (the Nakba of 1948). The massacres and the population transfers came alongside the denial of the reality of Palestine and the Palestinian people. The heir to Ze’evi, current finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said this March, “There’s no such thing as Palestinians because there’s no such thing as a Palestinian people.” This is not an opinion that can be dismissed as a far-right rant. Likud member Ofir Akunis, minister of science and technology, said three years ago, “There’s no place for any formula to establish a Palestinian state in Western Israel.” The phrase “Western Israel” is a chilling statement about the Israeli consensus on full annexation of the West Bank with disregard for international law.

A focus on Gaza is essential. The Israeli “hot violence” is extreme, with the death toll of Palestinians—almost half of them in Gaza of children—over 5,000. The Israeli land invasion has been blocked, for now, by the recognition of high morale among the Palestinian resistance. The latter will fight every Israeli soldier that goes into the ruins of Gaza. Before this Israeli incursion, 450 trucks crossed into Gaza with supplies for the 2.3 million residents; it was taken as a victory when nine United Nations trucks and 11 trucks of the Egyptian Red Crescent crossed into Gaza on October 21. Amnesty International looked at only five bombings of the Israelis and found evidence of war crimes, which should alert the International Criminal Court to re-open its file on Israeli atrocities. This should include the crime of collective punishment by cutting water and electricity to Gaza, and bombing access roads to the Rafah crossing into Egypt, and by bombing the Rafah crossing itself.

Large demonstrations across the world demand a ceasefire (at a minimum) and an end to the occupation. Israel is not interested. Its defense minister Yoav Gallant told parliament that his forces have a three-point plan—to destroy Hamas, to destroy the other Palestinian factions, and to create a new “security regime” in Gaza. The Palestinian people—not just the armed factions—are resolute in their resistance to Israeli occupation. The only way for Gallant’s new “security regime” to work would be to erase this resistance, which means to remove all Palestinians from Gaza either by massacres or by dispossession. The United States is following along with this extermination plan: a U.S. State Department memorandum says that its diplomats must not use phrases such as “de-escalation,” “ceasefire,” “end to violence,” “end to bloodshed,” and “restoring calm.”

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Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power.

It’s been a busy few weeks for Iran-related headlines: domestic turmoil triggered by the death of a Kurdish woman while in custody for allegedly violating rules on wearing the hijab; negotiations to restore the 2015 nuclear deal; and the release of an elderly former UNICEF official after more than six years.

All of which has Iran watchers wondering: Will these separate events weave a new narrative about Iran, its likely course, and US responses in the coming months?

Iranian society, led by women and girls, has converged in most of Iran’s major cities and towns to shout a new slogan: “Woman, Life, Liberty.” Unlike protests of the past that were staged mainly by educated elites against election irregularities, recent demonstrations over the death of Mahsa Amini appear to have tapped into a wider demographic and have more universal appeal. 

Young girls are mocking security forces, parading their veils on sticks, and showing a bravery and defiance unlike previous revolts against the cruelties of the Islamic Republic.  

Few are willing to speculate that this could be the end of Iran’s “revolution” and the beginning of real political change. The geriatric leaders in Tehran haven’t offered a word of empathy for the protesters, and the security forces they command have killed several dozen and imprisoned thousands.  

It’s equally impossible to predict how these protests will play out. The passion of protesters could fade, or the regime might offer concessions that would undercut momentum on the street. But it’s also conceivable that a deeper unraveling will occur, given the other stresses on Iran – from sanctions and international isolation to diminished opportunities for millions of young people.  

At the same time, Iran’s leaders face some hard choices regarding the nuclear deal, officially the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). There has been a slow dance between the US and Iran, orchestrated by the other parties to the agreement and officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. The two sides have exchanged proposals and, as recently as August, some believed an agreement was within reach. 

Those hopes were dashed when Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi addressed the United Nations General Assembly in late September, accusing the West of nuclear hypocrisy.

Diplomats close to the negotiations now see Iran reintroducing issues that had been resolved – such as the timing of an IAEA safeguards investigation – perhaps acting to delay any decision until after the US midterm elections in November. The mood on the US side, especially among those who prefer an imperfect agreement to the uncertainties of no agreement, has darkened. 

Optimists might hope that these threads will come together to weave a new narrative for Iran’s leaders, such as compromising on the JCPOA to improve their image and credibility. Yet there’s little evidence from Iranian history that such logic will prevail. 

To the contrary, the most likely impact of the veil protests is to make the regime more rigid. The regime is always prone to the belief that foreign powers are causing Iran harm. Because Western countries, including the US, are doing what they can to support the protests, one can assume that any spillover to JCPOA will be negative, not positive.

The final event impacting US-Iran relations is the recent release of an Iranian-Americans held by the regime since 2015. Baquer Namazi, the 86-year-old former UNICEF official, has traveled to the United Arab Emirates for medical treatment. Iran had previously dismissed charges against him but hadn’t allowed him to leave the country.

His 51-year-old son, Siamik Namazi, had been given a temporary release from Evin Prison but was forced to return this week.

The US has acknowledged indirect talks with Iran over Baquer Namazi’s release, but details are scarce. It’s possible that he was released out of fear for his medical condition, not as part of a swap or negotiation.

In July, US President Joe Biden signed an executive order about unlawfully detained Americans, formalizing the diplomatic process for seeking release of US citizens wrongfully held. It permits more penalties for hostage holders and allows the US government to share more information with the families of detainees imprisoned by non-state actors or by governments.  

In other words, the US is keeping hostage release efforts separate from the give and take of other ongoing work, such as the JCPOA. So, while it’s understandable to think that there must be a master plan that brings all these discrete events together in Washington’s Iran policy, the truth is that the US government is trying to do the opposite.

In 1989, George H.W. Bush signaled to Iran that “goodwill begets goodwill,” the notion that progress in one arena would spill over to other issues in dispute. But coming on the heels of the Reagan administration’s Iran Contra scandal in the 1980s, which included a scheme to swap arms with Iran for hostages in Lebanon, Bush’s interconnected policy approach eventually fell flat.

Similarly, it’s best to think of this current moment as a messy mix of challenges, some bringing heightened attention to Iran’s human rights conditions, and others in the multifaceted security arena, from Iran’s ongoing nuclear activities to its activism across the region from Syria and Iraq to Yemen. While it’s tempting to weave a connected narrative on US-Iran relations, history is rarely so neat.

Ellen Laipson is director of the international security program at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University in Virginia. She is a former vice chair of the US’s National Intelligence Council.

Since the Syrian uprising erupted more than a decade ago, tens of thousands of Syrians have simply vanished. Protestors arrested at checkpoints, men and women taken from their homes, regime opponents bundled into cars in the middle of the day. Perhaps 100,000 people – maybe fewer, maybe many times more – have disappeared, with their families having only the dimmest idea of where they are or whether they are even alive.

For the Assad regime, forced disappearance has become a weapon of war and a powerful one at that, inspiring fear, uncertainty and, for the families left behind, years of questions.

In trying to solve it, the United Nations is now reaching for a new tool, a new institution that would coordinate the claims of Syrians inside and outside the country. At the moment, questions and claims about family members inside the country – mainly held by the Assad regime, but also by a variety of groups operating on Syria’s territory – are filed with a variety of NGOs and humanitarian organizations. Some of these claims emerge when family members claim asylum abroad, or when they are processed in refugee camps. Some are filed by family members who are citizens of Arab or European countries.

Because of the haphazard nature of the filings, and because the Assad regime isn’t sharing information about who is in its prisons, there is no way to be sure who is missing, nor to offer families information and support, nor even to assemble sufficient information to be able to demand the Assad regime allows access to places of detention.

Yet while the idea of a new mechanism has been percolating through international institutions for some time, and while the idea now has support at the highest levels, with the UN secretary-general releasing a report putting forward the idea in August, and the UN Human Rights Council adopting a resolution on the mechanism just last week, it is still an idea whose time has not arrived.

Not because it would not inch forward the process of finding answers for the disappeared, but because it would still put most of the power in the hands of the regime.

Any such institution would only work at the whim of the regime. And for the Syrian regime, disappearances are a weapon it will not easily give up.

Enforced disappearances are not an oversight of a state fighting a war; they are one of the regime’s most powerful weapons for silencing opposition and dissent. The regime is not the only group on Syrian territory accused of enforced disappearances, almost every group from the Hayat Tahrir Al Sham to the Syrian Democratic Forces to, of course, ISIS have been accused of it. But the overwhelming number of those who have vanished have done so on regime-controlled territory.

The reason disappearances are so valuable for pacifying the population is that vanishing someone – say the father of a family – doesn’t merely impact that person, but has an impact on the entire family, who are dependent on the regime for answers. Without any answers or a body to bury, the family cannot move on – they cannot sell property, for example, or access insurance payments.

That is not a weapon the regime will easily give up, and certainly not if it means essentially admitting to crimes that may be prosecutable. This is where the major flaw with the idea of any new mechanism for disappearances becomes apparent. Because actually making the mechanism work will, in fact, be up to the regime.

Even the UN acknowledges this, noting in its report that, “until the new mechanism gains the support of the [Syrian government], it would be subject to similar territorial and access limitations as OHCHR.” This is a reference to the Office of the High Commission for Human Rights, a UN body that is meant to report on and monitor the situation for human rights within Syria, but that is in fact confined to Beirut.

Indeed, not only would the regime have to comply with the new mechanism for it to work, but it would need to agree with the “international mandate” that the UN imagines this new mechanism would have – something that even countries not engaged in a war might baulk at, claiming an infringement of national sovereignty, given that all those involved are citizens of Syria.

Worse, the Syrian regime would need to sign off on whoever would lead this mechanism. The UN report doesn’t take a position on who should lead it (“or co-lead”) but it is impossible to imagine that the regime would accept anything other than Syrian control or the control of an allied country. Which puts the mechanism in the circular situation of the regime leading a mechanism meant to investigate the crimes of the regime – crimes which, by the way, the regime says didn’t happen.

Indeed, we can already guess how the regime would handle this new mechanism, assuming it doesn’t ignore it altogether. The Syrian government does work with outside bodies, for example the Red Cross – and while it has allowed humanitarian aid into the country, and allowed international groups to operate, the regime deals with them in a heavily politicized way, closing borders on a whim or turning back convoys at checkpoints. That is exactly how the regime would handle any new mechanism.

It is unsurprising, after so many years of war, that the international community is seeking any mechanism for bringing about some progress on the Syria file. But a new mechanism is not the panacea. A new institution for Syria will not bring answers to the thousands of disappeared. But a new government in Syria might.

Syndication Bureau__________________

Faisal Al Yafai is currently writing a book on the Middle East and is a frequent commentator on international TV news networks. He has worked for news outlets such as The Guardian and the BBC, and reported on the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. Twitter: @FaisalAlYafai

In recent years, a seemingly endless stream of conferences, workshops, and studies have been conducted to answer a key question for countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA): Why do so few women in the region work?

Currently, just 19 percent of MENA’s labor force is female, the lowest worldwide. Despite plans and policies to address the gender gap in employment, women remain sidelined at work, which is hurting families and suppressing GDP growth across the region.

While the situation is not uniform in all Arab countries, the reasons that keep women out of the labor force are endemic.

It’s not that women aren’t eager to work outside the home, but legal discrimination, social norms, the burden of childcare, low wages, harassment, gender-related biases in hiring, and a dearth of safe transportation options are among the many barriers hindering employment ambitions.

And while none of this is new – strengthening female labor force participation has been a global development goal for decades – governments’ efforts to pursue labor market, education, and structural reforms continue to languish. 

Although the region’s women are better educated than ever, educational attainment has not translated into an increase in jobs. In fact, the unemployment rate among young women in Arab countries is 42.5 percent, nearly double that of young men (21.4 percent) and almost three times the global average of 14.9 percent.

In conflict-riddled countries like Yemen and Iraq, female labor force participation is the lowest in the region – 6 percent and 11 percent, respectively. But even in Jordan, a country not at war, only 13 percent of women work outside the home, according to the World Bank.

Jordan’s struggles to close this gap are illustrative. Already burdened with high unemployment – it hit 23 percent last year – the country has faced a confluence of negative economic trends, not to mention disruptions caused by COVID-19. And despite reforms to school curriculum, the education system continues to stereotype and sideline women, depicting them as inferior to men and limiting their role in society.

Given these failings, it’s not surprising that women are underrepresented in politics. There are just 15 women in the 130-member lower house of parliament – the minimum required under a gender quota system. In the cabinet, there are only two women, while 28 other ministerial positions are occupied by men.

In a patriarchal society, social norms are not easy to change. Challenging gender stereotypes and granting women equal rights often raises the ire of conservatives and Islamists, who see progress as an attack on Islamic values or linked to foreign agendas.

Sadly, these are not fringe ideas. A 2019 United Nations study found that in Jordan, weak legal protections and harmful views on gender conspire to keep women out of the labor force. These challenges were found at “every possible level directly and indirectly,” the report said, ranging from “what kind of work and what working hours are considered socially acceptable …to gender assigned roles that limit women’s role to child rearing and housekeeping.”

Three years later, little has changed. Jordan scored 46.9 out of 100 in the Women, Business, and the Law 2022 report, an index covering 190 countries that assesses the laws and regulations that impact women’s economic opportunities. Jordan’s score is lower than the regional average of 53 percent.

It’s inexplicable that women in Jordan, who can receive alimony payments, still need a spouse’s consent to work. It is even more frustrating that a male guardianship system intended to protect women imposes restrictions on their mobility, and even allows a male guardian to report women absent, subjecting them to arrest.

As consumer prices continue to rise, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for families to survive on one income. Many women want to work, but social conditioning has taught men that it’s a wife’s duty to do the household chores and to raise the children. A husband who shares responsibilities with his partner is viewed as doing his wife a favor. 

To be sure, the region has begun to bridge the gender divide with policies, laws, and well-meaning commitments to change. In Saudi Arabia, where the country is undergoing radical economic and social reforms, the rate of employment for women has risen dramatically to more than 30 percent. In other Gulf countries, like the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, the figure is nearly 50 percent.

 Despite these gains, much work remains. Possible steps include protecting women from discrimination during pregnancy and while on maternity leave; establishing workplace nurseries; and penalizing employers that discriminate based on gender.

And yet, lasting improvements in women’s workforce participation – in Jordan and beyond – will require the implementation of laws that empower women in all aspects of life. Social norms and stereotyping must be challenged – in the media, at school, in the home. The women of MENA are not inferior to men; the kitchen is not our kingdom. We have so much more to offer than that.

Syndication Bureau_____________________

Suha Ma’ayeh is a journalist based in Amman, Jordan. Her work has been published in Foreign Policy and CTC Sentinel. She also reports for The Wall Street Journal and other publications on Jordan and southern Syria.

Since the start of the year, hundreds of Syrian civil servants have reportedly resigned from their jobs, angered over meager pay that is barely enough to cover the cost of their commute. 

Fearing that the trend could spread, the Syrian regime is using a carrot and stick approach to ensure that public institutions continue to function. In addition to promised salary increases and one-off bonuses, the government is enforcing multiple measures to make the resignation process difficult, and costly.

For now, these tactics appear to have staunched the flow of resignations. But until salaries are brought in line with Syria’s surging cost of living, the success is unlikely to last.

Government jobs in Syria were once highly sought after. They provided people with job security (being fired was almost unheard of), and promotions and salary increases were guaranteed. Most civil servants – such as teachers, doctors, and members of the armed forces – were rarely stressed, working only a few hours a day and having ample public holidays.

The main downside was the pay, equivalent to about $400 per month for most positions. Yet even this was enough to make ends meet.

None of these benefits exist now. The average monthly wage of a civil servant today is less than 100,000 Syrian pounds, or about $23. Put another way, civil servants’ salaries have lost nearly 80 percent of their value since the civil war began in 2011.

Economic and political forces are exacerbating these trends. The devaluation of the Syrian pound, unprecedented levels of inflation, lack of essential commodities, and the global implications of the war in Ukraine have significantly increased the cost of living in Syria and created an unprecedented gap between income and expenditure.

The average cost of living for a Syrian family of five exceeded 2.8 million Syrian pounds in March, more than 28-times the average government salary. Hence, it’s not surprising that many civil servants are trying to find something better, either at home or abroad. 

The Syrian regime doesn’t release reliable figures, so it’s difficult to know how many of Syria’s roughly 700,000 public sector workers have left their jobs. But media reports suggest that hundreds, if not thousands, of government employees in various governorates, including Sweida and Latakia, have quit since the beginning of the year. 

The number of workers whose resignation requests are still pending, or have already been rejected, is believed to be even higher. 

Over the last decade, tens of thousands of Syrian civil servants have abandoned their posts. According to an April 2021 report by the Danish Immigration Service, an estimated 138,000 cases involving workers leaving a public position without notice were filed with courts between 2011 and 2017. Of the 50,000 verdicts, 38,000 cases were decided in favor of the state and 12,000 in favor of the employee.

Punishments ranged from fines to being charged with terrorism; the Syrian government considers defection from a public sector position to be a political action or an anti-government activity, the report said. 

Punitive measures aren’t the regime’s only course of action. Prime Minister Hussein Arnous, who has conceded that salaries are significantly lower than living costs, raised public sector pay by 30 percent in December 2021. Since then, government officials have promised an additional 25 percent increase, though that raise has yet to be delivered.

The regime has also been providing one-off bonuses. Government employees received an additional 75,000 pounds in April, and another 100,000 pounds in August. The government has even increased the tax-free allowance, to 92,000 pounds from 50,000 pounds, meaning that most civil servants pay little to no income tax.  

 But these measures were too little, too late for many, and the resignations continued. In response, the regime issued a directive last month that ministries must be stricter when reviewing resignation requests, and an application can only be approved if the employee is no longer needed by their department. Even then, decisions to grant separation must be approved by the national intelligence agency. 

Given these added layers of bureaucracy, many employees’ resignation requests are being automatically rejected. Those that aren’t are subject to interrogation by security forces, a clear intimidation tactic designed to keep people in their jobs.

Only a handful of Syrians have successfully turned in their government-issued IDs in recent months. Many civil servants, especially those who have decided to remain in Syria, are likely hanging on out of fear.

But the deteriorating economic situation in Syria means that without stronger intervention, the gap between income and living expenses will continue to widen. The regime’s current policy of providing small salary increases and one-off bonuses is failing to improve morale, and public sector workers are unlikely to be satisfied until they are paid a livable wage.

Otherwise, there will come a time when civil servants have no choice but pursue work that covers more than the commute to the office.

Syndication Bureau_________________

Dr. Haid Haid is Haid Haid is a Syrian columnist and a senior consulting research fellow of the Chatham House Middle East and North Africa Program. Previously, he was a program manager on Syria and Iraq at the Heinrich Böll Foundation Middle East Office in Beirut. He also worked as a senior community services protection assistant at UNHCR’s Damascus office. He has a bachelor’s degree in sociology, a postgraduate diploma in counseling, master’s degrees in social development and conflict resolution as well as a PhD in war studies. His main research interests include security, conflict, governance, non-state actors and preventing and countering violent extremism.