“No, no, no,” said former Secretary of State (under Obama) John Kerry.  If some one thought it would be possible to make peace between Israel and other Arab nations without first satisfying the demands of the Palestinians, they had another thing coming.  It simply wasn’t possible, so why even try?  But John wasn’t the only one haughtily talking sing-song.  The media said it constantly.  Most believed it and parroted it.  Nothing could move past the stalemate between Israel and the Palestinians, it was impossible.  There was nothing to do but satisfy the demands of the “Palestinians,” and no leader of the Palestinians dared move toward peace with Israel without risking the very real possibility of assassination.  It wouldn’t be the first time.

But as we saw this week at the White House signing ceremony, it wasn’t impossible after all.  The President sat between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Foreign Ministers of both the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and signed a comprehensive pact of cooperation dubbed the Abraham Accords that includes the exchange of embassies, direct flights between capitals and phone system links.  According to statements by the President and his aides, we’re going to see a whole raft of Arab countries make peace with Israel including eventually even Iran and the Palestinians.  “Iran can’t wait to make a deal,” said the President at last night’s rally (he called it a friendly protest).

Is it OK to mention the strides toward Middle East peace, or is that too “political” for an organization like ours?  On the surface, it sounds like a wonderful development.  Too bad we know some of the warnings contained in the Bible.  When do we get to start worrying about “peace and safety” in the Western world?  How about American cities?  What we’ve seen developing, which is anger and violence on a whole new level, doesn’t inspire much confidence.  We’re being led to believe that ALL the demands of the riotous protesters must be satisfied, or we can just get used to “peaceful protests” burning down businesses, ambushing police officers and trashing city centers.

Global warming is on the march too!  For nearly four decades those who want to see Western civilization under the thumb of a dictatorial system ranted and raved that “global warming” was an “existential threat,” and that we needed to start driving battery cars and using windmills and solar panels for electricity before it’s too late!  We wanted to print an article that appeared in Forbes’ publication in the upcoming 21^st Century WATCH.  Since it’s not going to appear, we’ll tell you what it says.  An electric car has already used half the “carbon footprint” of the life of an internal combustion vehicle before it ever leaves the showroom floor.  If the battery has to be replaced before the vehicle is worn out, then the pollution involved surpasses anything produced by your standard piston engine, to say nothing of the constant charging of the electric vehicle.  That’s not to say that electric vehicles don’t have their place (quiet golf carts are nice), but they’re definitely not going to “save the planet.”

They’re blaming the West coast fires on “global warming.”  If somebody says otherwise, the media labels them a right-wing kook.  But arsonists keep getting caught setting fires, particularly in and around places like Portland where the rioting has been the worst.  Despite mainstream denials, you can watch videos of firebugs being caught in the act.

The F.I.B. investigated and zuckerbook has been removing posts that claim activists are responsible for some of the western wildfires.  The information was on the (9-14-20) Yahoo page.  To the right of that page it said, “What to Read Next” above a photo of a fire fighter and his dog rummaging through  the rubble of a building or house surrounded by charred forest.  The headline read, “Oregon Man Arrested Twice in 12 Hours for starting Fires Near Portland Freeway.”  Maybe no one noticed that the second story on tap disputed what was just said in the first.  Maybe you saw the Oregon video of a man being made to lie face down on the pavement as a female landowner holds him for the police.  He’s in all black, of course, and the landowner asks, “What are those matches doing in your hand?” He replies, “I’m a smoker.”  “Then where are your (expletive deleted) cigarettes?!?”  The whole scene is choked with smoke.

To get a feel for the extent of the smoke, take a look at the satellite images.  You can see the whole thing from space, and it shows that the smoke gets blown out to sea and then comes back with the weather.  Having talked to John Mitchell in Sacramento (9-15-20), he said that the smoke in that area has been “hazardous” for the past 10 days straight, and there is no letup in sight.  There have been stories, most times accompanied by video, of firebugs running around lighting fires in Washington state and Oregon.  But that disputes the media narrative that seeks to convince us that the fires are nothing more than PROOF of global warming.  It’s more like PROOF that black lives matter and antifa thugs are willing to burn the country down to get their way.  Getting their way demands the destruction of freedom.  Or is that too political to talk about?

California is ordering Jewish congregations NOT to gather in observance of Rosh Hashanah, or the Feast of Trumpets, in Los Angeles.  We’ll see what legal ramifications are involved, but it kind of looks like both the governor and the mayor of Los Angeles are pitting their “authority” against God’s instructions for the good of the collective. But we don’t believe in “the collective” or any of their other communist ideals.  Good luck to the preening politicians.  They’ve picked the wrong fight.  We’ll be here for the Feast of Trumpets as commanded by God.  The Texas governor has screwed up big time, perhaps having destroyed Texas’ reputation permanently.  But at least we haven’t been “ordered” not to assemble for the annual Holy Day.  We’d have defied him anyway.

Mark

PS:  We hope that all of you will be able to observe the Feast of Trumpets without incident. It begins at sundown this evening.  We’ll be live streaming our service on the Intercontinental Church of God youtube channel at 1:00 pm Central time.

Source:  http://www.intercontinentalcog.org/fridayupdates.php

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – 18 September 2020 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki.   (photo credit: REUTERS/MOHAMED ABD EL GHANY)

The Palestinian Authority leadership on Friday strongly condemned and rejected Bahrain’s decision to establish relations with Israel, calling it a “betrayal of Jerusalem, al-Aqsa Mosque and the Palestinian issue.”

The PA Foreign Ministry announced it has decided to immediately recall its ambassador to Bahrain for consultations in protest of the normalization agreement.

Last month, the Palestinian leadership issued a similar response to the normalization agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It also decided to recall its ambassador to Abu Dhabi.

The PA leadership said the Bahraini decision would “support the legalization of the cruel crimes of the Israeli occupation against our Palestinian people at a time when the occupation [sic] state is continuing to control the Palestinian lands and annex them by military force; is working toward Judaizing Jerusalem and controlling the Islamic and Christian holy sites; and is committing crimes against the Palestinian people.”

The Palestinian leadership said in a statement that it views the Bahraini decision “with utmost seriousness because it destroys the Arab Peace Initiative, resolutions of Arab and Islamic summits and international legitimacy.”

It said the Palestinians reject the decision and call on Bahrain to immediately retract it because it causes huge damage to the national rights of the Palestinian people and to joint Arab action.

“The Palestinian leadership reaffirms its call for the Arab countries to adhere to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative and urges the international community to adhere to international law and the resolutions of international legitimacy,” the statement read.

“The Palestinian leadership reaffirms that it has not and will not authorize anyone to speak on its behalf. It also affirms that peace and stability in the region won’t be achieved unless the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories is ended and Palestinians achieve an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, with east Jerusalem as its capital – and that the issue of the refugees is solved on the basis of United Nations Resolution 194. Those who believe that concessions that come at the expense of the rights of the Palestinian people will serve peace, security and stability in the region are deluding themselves.”

Several Palestinian officials expressed outrage over the “disgraceful and treacherous” Israel-Bahrain agreement and accused Bahrain of betraying the Palestinian people.

PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat accused the UAE and Bahrain of “contributing to [US President Donald] Trump’s presidential campaign at the expense of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people.”

Ahmed Majdalani, member of the PLO Executive Committee, denounced the Israel-Bahrain agreement as a “stab to the national rights of the Palestinian people and their national cause. He said that the US administration’s “delusion that it can make peace between the occupying state and the Arab countries without the Palestinians and without an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories is political stupidity.”

Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other extremist groups also condemned the Israel-Bahrain accord and said it was “the fruit of the failure of the Arab League.”

Last week, Arab League foreign ministers refused to endorse a Palestinian draft resolution that condemned the UAE for its agreement to establish relations with Israel.

“What the Kingdom of Bahrain did is disgraceful and constitutes a political setback and a major downfall for the rulers of Bahrain,” Hamas said in a statement. “This series of steps, initiated by the Emiratis, and then the rulers of Bahrain, constitutes political crimes, contributes to the implementation of the Deal of the Century and undermines the foundations of Arab solidarity. Hamas rejects this announcement and considers it a stab in the back of the Palestinian people, a betrayal of Palestine and Jerusalem and a step against the interests of the Arabs and Muslims.”

Source: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/palestinians-strongly-condemn-israel-bahrain-deal-withdraw-ambassador-641976

The post Palestinians strongly condemn Israel-Bahrain deal, withdraw ambassador first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

It’s a day we’ll never forget.  But at least we had an identifiable enemy to track down.  Nineteen years ago we got a mighty serious wake-up call.  We had no choice but to come to grips with the reality that some idiot zealots were prepared to kill innocent people by the thousands in order to show us that Islam is the true religion.  For a minute or two, it seemed that the United States was unified against a common enemy.

On September 11, 2001 we didn’t know what was going on.  Some worst-case scenarios passed our minds.  How many hijacked airliners?  We didn’t know.  What will they destroy?  Three thousand innocents didn’t survive the onslaught.  Most of them died in the collapsed twin towers, but innocent Americans were also killed in the Pentagon and some were passengers on the ill-fated planes.  Once we knew the extent of it and that the nation would survive, fear turned to anger.  The president (G. W. Bush) at the time led the angry reaction, and within weeks American bombers were blasting a labyrinth of caves in Afghanistan, to be followed by battalions of troops.

The bad news is that nineteen years later, we still maintain a presence in Afghanistan.  We’ve been losing soldiers right along, dozens to so-called “friendly fire” incidents where trusted locals turned on our men and murdered them inside our own bases.  The cat and mouse games have gone on for nearly twenty years now, and hundreds more of our American soldiers have been killed or maimed in the impossible mission of establishing some reason and logic. It couldn’t be done, and there our people are still, suffering the blight of the Muslim Middle East, and occasionally we lose some to hideous injury or death.

President Trump announced his intention to bring our soldiers home from these “endless” and unproductive wars.  But the Pentagon disagreed, and Trump deferred to their experience and knowledge.  Three and a half years into Trump’s first term and our troops are still there.  The generals with rank don’t want to see America pull out of any of several locations in the Middle East.  But Trump’s not waiting for them to come around.  Who are they working for anyway?  Turns out many of them go on to make big bucks lobbying for the manufacturers of equipment and munitions, after they retire from the American military.  Something’s not entirely right.

So the breaking news this week is that Trump is drawing down our forces in the Middle East dramatically.  The mainstream hated to interrupt their wall to wall coverage of the latest lie published in the Atlantic.  They called in everybody and their dog to find out why Trump hates the military so much that he’d call dead WW1 and WW2 veterans suckers and losers.  Not only did he purportedly say it, but said it with all kinds of people present!  The only problem for the media is that several of those who were claimed to have been present denied he said any such thing.  Even John Bolton denied he said it, and you surely know where he’s coming from.

So the past week has been more unfounded hear-say against Trump, and the media has been working overtime to say he has no respect for the military.  Except he’s shown otherwise.  He’s provided our guys with all new and improved equipment, vehicles, tanks, airplanes and enough ordnance so they won’t run out.  But the bent genders at the anchor desks are determined that Trump hates the military, and that we all hate Trump.  Have you ever, in your life, seen such a crusade?  Maybe they’ll be able to find a soldier that is really incensed that he got to come home.  Stand by.  The search has begun.

The other news is that Bahrain has decided to make peace with Israel.  First the UAE, now Bahrain, and we’re led to believe that there will be more.  There’s no describing how irrelevant those angry “Palestinians” must be feeling.  They thought they held the key to the entire Middle East, including the wealthy nations that don’t exactly need everything blown to rubble.  It seems that their importance may have been somewhat inflated.  Our media has been pushing that narrative for about forty some years, and it’s blown up in their faces too.  What will that crazy Donald Trump do next?

In the United States, it’s open season on police officers and…they’re quitting.  Can you even imagine the anarchy that will prevail if the “abolish the police” movement succeeds?  We’ve seen examples in several cities, and it’s not pretty.  Police are in a no-win situation.  In many cases, they’ve been ordered NOT to do their jobs.  We’ve seen the results.  In Minneapolis and in Seattle, the police (or their bosses) decided it would be a good idea to abandon their buildings.  The one in Seattle is still standing.  The one in Minneapolis was torched.  Police cannot maintain law and order lest the media foment additional anarchy.  Not only that, the rioters might be offended, the “news” desks will be offended and claim that the police are causing the riots, and the rioters are just a bunch of pitiful victims.

This week we learned that the entire upper echelon of Rochester, NY police decided it is time to go.  Some have served their community for decades.  Police put a spit mask (isn’t everybody wearing one?) on a black man exhibiting signs of insanity and forced him to the ground, where he expired.  It doesn’t seem that they did anything that would have caused his death, but he died anyway.   You don’t suppose it had anything to do with the fact that he was OD-ing on PCP?   The Medical Examiner thought it might. Rochester is the latest battleground for masked thugs and arsonists, most of whom are probably from somewhere else.

Apparently the police don’t want to play the stupid games that have taken place in other cities.  They can’t win, and chances are their jobs were going to be eliminated.  But they didn’t give that or any other explanation.  They just quit.  We don’t know exactly why.  They’ve probably decided life is too short to be squandered in the streets doing battle with a horde of professional thugs transported in to wreck the place.  It is now being reported that more than two dozen Chiefs of Police have resigned in just the past two months.  This week we learned that the Dallas Police Chief, the first black woman to hold the post, is leaving too.  You have to wonder if whatever other profession they’ve all chosen will be workable when there’s no one to call.  This thing could spiral completely out of control.  Then even the snowflakes will be praying for Jesus’ return.

Mark

PS: Anyone who needs DVDs for use during the Feast of Tabernacles should let us know right away. We will be live-streaming our services on the Intercontinental Church of God YouTube channel.  For speakers to travel under the uncertain (might we say, ridiculous) circumstances seemed inadvisable.  Who knows what kind of nonsense the newly minted tyrants will dream up next?

Source: http://www.intercontinentalcog.org/fridayupdates.php

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – 11 September 2020 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

EXCLUSIVE: Just weeks after helping to broker peace between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), President Trump has been nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize.

The nomination submitted by Christian Tybring-Gjedde, a member of the Norwegian Parliament, lauded Trump for his efforts toward resolving protracted conflicts worldwide.

“For his merit, I think he has done more trying to create peace between nations than most other Peace Prize nominees,” Tybring-Gjedde, a four-term member of Parliament who also serves as chairman of the Norwegian delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, told Fox News in an exclusive interview.

TRUMP ANNOUNCES PEACE AGREEMENT BETWEEN ISRAEL, UAE

Tybring-Gjedde, in his nomination letter to the Nobel Committee, said the Trump administration has played a key role in the establishment of relations between Israel and the UAE. “As it is expected other Middle Eastern countries will follow in the footsteps of the UAE, this agreement could be a game changer that will turn the Middle East into a region of cooperation and prosperity,” he wrote.

Also cited in the letter was the president’s “key role in facilitating contact between conflicting parties and … creating new dynamics in other protracted conflicts, such as the Kashmir border dispute between India and Pakistan, and the conflict between North and South Korea, as well as dealing with the nuclear capabilities of North Korea.”

Tybring-Gjedde, further, praised Trump for withdrawing a large number of troops from the Middle East. “Indeed, Trump has broken a 39-year-old streak of American Presidents either starting a war or bringing the United States into an international armed conflict. The last president to avoid doing so was Peace Prize laureate Jimmy Carter,” he wrote.

This is not Trump’s first such nomination, as Tybring-Gjedde submitted one along with another Norwegian official in 2018 following the U.S. president’s Singapore summit with Kim Jong Un. Japan’s prime minister reportedly did the same. Trump did not win.

Tybring-Gjedde, a member of a conservative-leaning populist party in Norway, told Fox News that his latest nomination is not about trying to curry favor with the U.S. president.

KUSHNER TOUTS PEACE AGREEMENT

“I’m not a big Trump supporter,” he said. “The committee should look at the facts and judge him on the facts – not on the way he behaves sometimes. The people who have received the Peace Prize in recent years have done much less than Donald Trump. For example, Barack Obama did nothing.”

The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to then-President Barack Obama for what the Nobel Committee called his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

That decision made just nine months into Obama’s first term was met with criticism in the U.S. – including from Donald Trump, then a private citizen. Lech Walesa, Poland’s former president and a 1983 Nobel laureate, also said at the time it was too early to bestow the award on Obama — just 263 days after taking office: “Too fast. For the time being Obama’s just making proposals. But sometimes the Nobel Committee awards the prize to encourage responsible action.”

Even Obama was taken aback, saying at the time he was “surprised and humbled” by the Nobel Committee’s decision. “To be honest,” he said, “I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who have been honored by this prize, men and women who’ve inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.”

Besides Obama, three other U.S. presidents have won the Nobel Peace Prize: President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 for “having negotiated peace in the Russo-Japanese war”; President Woodrow Wilson in 1920 for being the “leading architect of the League of Nations”; and President Jimmy Carter in 2002 for “his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts.”

The post Trump nominated for Nobel Peace Prize by Norwegian official, citing Israel-UAE peace deal first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

US wants Arab-Israeli support in countering Beijing’s influence over supply routes seen as a ‘life and death’ matter for China’s economy, analysts say

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The United States is actively seeking to leverage its pivotal role in establishing diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to intensify its resistance to China’s Belt and Road interests in the Middle East, Horn of Africa and the eastern Mediterranean.

The framework of the trilateral agreement, announced on August 13 by the UAE’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash and lauded as historic by the Trump administration that brokered it, contained plans for a maritime security alliance, analysts and commentators told This Week in Asia.

Once implemented, the trilateral alliance will establish a “strategic triangle” which, primarily, aims to counter Iranian threats to shipping passing through the region’s two maritime choke points: the Strait of Hormuz, at the entrance to the hydrocarbon-rich Gulf, and the Bab El-Mandeb Strait between Yemen and the Horn of Africa, on the way from the Indian Ocean to the Suez Canal.  Alongside the Strait of Malacca – a strip of water between Peninsular Malaysia

and the Indonesian island of Sumatra – they comprise the three strategic maritime passages most important to China’s geopolitical interests. Beijing has described unhindered access to the three waterways as a “matter of life and death” for its economy.

Key ports and trade routes.

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The US-led trilateral maritime alliance further aims to contest Turkey’s assertion of a vastly expanded claim to an exclusive economic zone covering most of the eastern Mediterranean Sea, following its agreement last November with the Tripoli-based United Nations- recognized government of civil war-torn Libya.

Tensions have also risen between China and Turkey over its military intervention in support of the Libyan government, and over President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s diplomatic handling of China’s controversial mass detention of Uygur Muslims, a Turkic ethnic group.

“The Israel-UAE deal is partially aimed at formalizing cooperation on maritime security and on combating threats to vital supply routes,” said Samuel Ramani, a commentator on Middle East affairs and doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford.  He expects “cautious” logistical, joint drills on maritime security supervised by the US, at least initially, as well as joint Israeli and Emirati membership in a US-led maritime security coalition – like the one it formed against Iran  last year – as potential outcomes.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Photo: AP

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“It’s too early to see how this plays out, but already there are concerns in Beijing about what this means for the Belt and Road Initiative,” Ramani said.

More than maritime shipping, however, he said China suspected “hidden strings” may have been inserted into the US-Israel-UAE agreement by Jared Kushner, President Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law.

“It may be understood by all parties that the US is promising trilateral economic cooperation at the expense of China,” said Kelsey Broderick, China analyst for the Eurasia Group, a New York-based geopolitical risk consultancy.

“However, it seems unlikely that the US asked for a list of specific anti-China measures from Israel and the UAE as a component of the deal,” she said.

Ramani said the agreement was also greatly influenced by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who since 2018 has ratcheted up pressure on Washington’s Middle East allies to pick sides in its diplomatic and economic confrontation with China.

“The US certainly is paying more attention to the China-UAE relationship than ever before,” Ramani said.

The US State Department has been “especially vocal about the need for countries in the Gulf to choose between the US and China,” he said.

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US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Photo: AFP

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China is a major trading partner of the UAE and Israel. Emirati ports transship about 60 per cent of all westbound Chinese maritime trade, and the UAE accounts for 28 per cent of China’s non-oil trade with the Middle East, the principal source of oil for the world’s biggest importer. The UAE is home to more than 4,000 Chinese companies doing business throughout the Arab world and Africa, and to some 200,000 Chinese nationals, earning Dubai the nickname “Hong Kong east”. Most Chinese firms are based at the Jebel Ali free zone operated by Dubai’s state-owned DP World, the leading container terminal operator in the Arabian Peninsula and South Asia.

In neighbouring Abu Dhabi, the largest of the UAE’s seven emirates and its seat of political power, Cosco Shipping Ports has established its Middle East hub at Khalifa Port – 25km south of DP World’s mother hub of Jebel Ali. Leveraging its joint venture there with the leading European shipping line Geneva-based Mediterranean Shipping Co (MSC), the Chinese maritime industry leader boosted cargo volume at Khalifa Port by 82 per cent within six months.

Kamran Bokhari, director of analytical development at the Centre for Global Policy (CGP), said Abu Dhabi’s recent actions had much less to do with Israel specifically than they did with the UAE’s “efforts to try and manage a precarious regional security vacuum”.

“It has to do with the Emirates’ efforts to assume charge of Arab diplomacy in order to manage regional security interests at a time of uncertain American intentions and when Turkey is pressing ahead with its efforts to become the hegemon in the Middle East,” Bokhari said in a recent analysis published by the CGP, a think tank based in Washington.

Thus far, the UAE has enjoyed the US security umbrella, but “that umbrella is becoming increasingly unreliable as Washington has been moving away from heavy lifting vis-a-vis regional security needs”, he said.

“Abu Dhabi knows that the US strategy for the Middle East increasingly relies on regional players to take the lead, and this is driving Emirati behaviour,” Bokhari said.

Dubai’s Jebel Ali Terminal.

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Ben Scott, director of Australia’s Security and the Rules-Based Order Project at the Sydney-based Lowy Institute, said Abu Dhabi’s growing doubts about Washington’s resolve and staying power had accelerated its growing ties with China.

This has further deepened the divergence of interests in the region between the US and the UAE.

Abu Dhabi has distanced itself from Washington’s policy of sanctions-based “maximum pressure” towards Iran, which it fears could provoke a devastating war in which its oil-production facilities, ports and free zones would be targeted.

It has also parted ways with the US in Syria, which the UAE has worked to bring back into the fold of the Arab League, both to counter Turkey’s military intervention and to reduce President Bashar al-Assad’s economic dependence on Iran.

“Abu Dhabi needs to realign with the US foreign policy consensus. But there are few foreign policy issues on which Republicans and Democrats still agree. The fact that one of those points of agreement is opposition to China has only added to the UAE’s problems,” said Scott, in a report published by the Lowy Institute.

He said the UAE’s decision to “normalize” relations with Israel was driven by its need to strengthen bipartisan support in the US Congress and improve its image with the administration that will take power after presidential elections in November.

“The UAE has gone a long way to restoring its standing in Washington and probably given itself more room to move with China. But managing US-China rivalry will remain a daunting challenge, even for the shrewd and capable Emiratis,” Scott said.

As for Israel, its exports to China almost quadrupled between 2009 and 2018, hitting US$4.79 billion, according to World Bank data. Its imports more than doubled to US$10.46 billion in 2018, making China its second-largest trading partner behind the US.

Meanwhile, the state-owned China Harbour Engineering Co (CHEC) is developing Israel’s second commercial port at the town of Ashdod.

The Chinese investments have taken place as part of Israeli government reforms to expand and privatise its ports. Chinese firms are expected to be leading contenders for stakes in Haifa and Ashdod ports.

The British oil tanker Stena Impero is surrounded by speedboats of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps in the Strait of Hormuz. Photo: Xinhua

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China’s concerns have been fuelled by Pompeo’s recent ultimatum to Israel and the fallout.

During a visit to Jerusalem in May – his first overseas trip since the coronavirus pandemic – Pompeo reiterated warnings that Washington would reduce intelligence sharing with Israel if it allowed large-scale Chinese participation in infrastructure projects.

Soon after, an expanded security review of Chinese investments being conducted by Israel under US pressure kicked in: it rejected the practically confirmed bid of a Hong Kong-based conglomerate founded by tycoon Li Ka-shing to build the US $1.5 billion Sorek-2 water desalination plant.

Israel has also agreed to exclude Chinese equipment from its 5G wireless internet networks, according to recent reports.

But the US, which is in the process of withdrawing combat forces from the Middle East, has demanded a more exorbitant price for buttressing Israel and the UAE against their regional competitors Iran and Turkey: it wants Abu Dhabi and Jerusalem to act in concert with it against Beijing.

“It definitely seems that Washington is trying to convince some Middle East countries to choose between aligning with either China or the US, likely with an eye on China’s expanding investments in the region,” said Broderick.

Washington is seeking to belatedly avert Beijing’s fait accompli of building a vast network of ports and industrial free zones stretching from South Asia to the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa.

China is very close to connecting its “string of pearls” network of military and commercial facilities in the Indian Ocean with the one it is building along the eastern Mediterranean seaboard.

Israel’s port of Haifa. File photo

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Shanghai International Port Group is due to launch operations next year at a new container terminal it is developing at Israel’s sole commercial port of Haifa, under a 25-year lease signed last year.

Despite Pompeo’s claims that China could use it to spy on the US Navy, which frequents the port, Israel has rejected Pompeo’s demands to cancel the Chinese lease for Haifa. Israel had faced the most US pressure, Broderick said, “but I doubt Israel will act against the belt and road to the same extent as the US, unless China-Iran security cooperation significantly ramps up”.

China and Russia recently led opposition to a failed US attempt to indefinitely extend the UN Security Council’s embargo on arms sales to Iran, which will now expire on October 18.

Since 2012, CHEC has also worked to rehabilitate the northern Lebanese port of Tripoli, which markets itself as a logistical hub for Syria.

Hong Kong-based Cosco Shipping Ports launched a mainline container service to Tripoli port late last year.

Cosco and its partner shipping lines would add them to service loops meeting at the Greek port of Piraeus, which it has majority owned since 2016.

Locals fish on the bank of Tripoli port. Photo: AP

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Working primarily with MSC, which has since become its partner at Khalifa Port in Abu Dhabi, Cosco has transformed Piraeus from a backwater into the Mediterranean’s second-busiest maritime trade hub.

This connection “would align very well with China’s strategy for the belt and road”, Broderick said.

“An early focus on investing in critical assets has given way to a new focus on connecting these assets in [belt and road] participating countries,” she said.

China had been working with members to sign trade facilitation, port, and customs agreements to reduce trade costs for Chinese exporters and importers, she said.

It leaves China well placed to play the role of “angel investor” in Lebanon, which defaulted on its international loans before Beirut was devastated by a

massive explosion at its port on August 4.

“China has one unique advantage over other lenders, which is quick and ready capital,” Broderick said.

“The question for Lebanon would be the availability of other countries and companies to compete with China: concerns over Chinese influence and debt will be void if the US or other regional players do not step in and offer to help,” she said.

In turn, Lebanon’s financial crisis has upended the war-stressed economy of  Syria, most of which is now controlled by al-Assad and his allies.

Damascus has encouraged Beijing to take a leading role in the UN-estimated US$250 billion post-war reconstruction boom, highlighting the scope for an overland belt-and-road trade route from Tripoli to China via  Iraq and Iran.

Washington wants to prevent Beijing from making this intercontinental belt-and-road breakthrough, which would greatly increase China’s soft power.  It would also tighten China’s grip on the shore-based logistics of maritime trade in the region, located at the junction of Asia and Europe. China is the European Union’stop source of imports and its second-biggest export market.

However, to make any further inroads against the belt and road, the US would first have to persuade Israel and the UAE to deny Chinese exports access to the shipping services that will soon be established between the two new diplomatic partners – a situation that seems highly implausible.

In any case, Israel’s trade with the UAE will be centred at Haifa’s Chinese-operated container terminal.

Dubai, “Hong Kong east” to some. File photo

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Despite US pressure, the UAE remains a leading proponent of growing ties with China. The UAE is a founding partner in the Beijing-based

Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and the Abu Dhabi Global Market and the Shanghai Stock Exchange are working to set up an exchange dedicated to raising funds for belt-and-road projects. Dubai would have hosted this year’s Belt and Road Summit in April, had it not been cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Beijing may hope to leverage its goodwill in the UAE to boost the relationship with Israel at a time when the US is pushing back on Chinese investment in the country,” Eurasia Group analyst Broderick said.

Emirati enthusiasm is driven, in part, by its need to avoid competing with the belt and road, which mirrors Dubai’s model of creating state-of-the-art sea-air logistics hubs and industrial zones like the one at Jebel Ali. Before the unveiling of the belt-and-road plan, DP World had already established its own global network of ports, including four in China – one of them in Hong Kong.

China has already established an alternative hub for its export trades at Gwadar, the focal point of the US$60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

The largest country-specific programme of the belt-and-road plan, CPEC has vastly improved connectivity along China’s sole overland access route to the Indian Ocean first established in 1978.

Built and operated by the state-owned China International Port Holding Company, Gwadar port has recently started to handle commercial cargoes for neighbouring Afghanistan

China is also invested heavily in Oman’s industrial free zone at the Arabian Sea port of Duqm. Valued at US$10.7 billion upon completion, it is the single largest belt-and-road project in the Middle East and represents a means of bypassing the Strait of Hormuz – and DP World’s mother hub at Jebel Ali – especially in the event of a conflict in the Gulf.

The port at Gwadar is the focal point of the US$60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Photo: Xinhua

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As a much smaller state and major trading partner of China, the UAE in 2015 took the prudent decision of promoting DP World’s ports and free zones as a pre-existing facilitator of China’s commercial belt-and-road objectives when it was launched.

Both sides have benefited from this commercial collaboration, with their bilateral trade rising by about 10 per cent a year since 2015 to reach US$50 billion last year.

However, because of the UAE’s long-standing enmity with Iran, it is determined to secure its commercial shipping through the Bab El-Mandeb Strait.

As a major participant in the Saudi-led coalition which has fought the Houthis in Yemen since 2015, the UAE has gained “privileged access” to Aden port.

At its behest, southern Yemeni separatists have also seized the Socotra Archipelago, strategically located at the mouth of the Bab El-Mandeb Strait.

This assertion of the UAE’s strategic interests has brought DP World into conflict with its Chinese counterparts over operating concessions for ports in the Horn of Africa. Despite being a coalition partner of the UAE in Yemen, in 2018 the Djibouti government ejected DP World, the long-standing concession holder for Doraleh Container Terminal, and sold its strategic stake and operating rights to Hong Kong-based China Merchants Port Holdings (CMPH). DP World sued CMPH and feuded with the Chinese and Djibouti governments – a recent memory that still rankled in Beijing, said Ramani.

Djibouti hosts China’s sole overseas military base, along with naval facilities used by the US, France and five other nations.

Chinese port operators and DP World are also at odds in fragmented neighbouring Somalia. Like in Djibouti, a 2017 agreement between the administration of the breakaway Puntland region and P&O Ports, a DP World subsidiary, to develop the port of Bosaso has fallen into dispute.

Again, China was the beneficiary – despite being an ally of the central Somalia government in Mogadishu.

Soon after being elected president of Puntland last year, Said Abdullahi Deni travelled to Beijing, where he awarded a contract to develop the Red Sea port of Eyl to state-owned China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation.

“Djibouti-style disputes and rivalries are likely in the near future,” Ramani said.

Two boys with the flags of Djibouti and China. Photo: AFP

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Alan Abbey, a veteran commentator based in Jerusalem, said Israel – like its new diplomatic partner the UAE – wanted to placate the US, their key security and diplomatic partner, but not at the cost of antagonising China and damaging their economies.

“Israel and the UAE share the delicate and difficult tasks of managing relations with both the US and China, whose conflicts are out in the open and growing daily. This is a long-term challenge both countries face,” said Abbey, who is a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.

“Despite their strengths – oil and capital in the UAE and military smarts in Israel – each are small fish needing to swim with, yet dodge the sharp teeth of, two giant sharks,” he said.

Like the US, Israel is closely monitoring China’s moves in Lebanon because it has been encouraged to prop up the economy and redevelop Beirut by the Iran-backed Hezbollah political party and militia, with which Israel fought a 34-day war in 2006. Hezbollah forces have been a key component of the foreign military coalition, spearheaded by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, that turned the war in Syria in favour of the Assad regime with the aid of Russian air power.

Israel frequently launches missile attacks on Hezbollah and Revolutionary Guard bases in Syria located near Damascus.

Likewise, the US and Israel are deeply concerned by a mammoth 25-year strategic partnership under negotiation between China and Iran. Pompeo has said it would put Chinese Communist Party money in the hands of Iran and its allies in the Middle East – in particular Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

“Israel is no stranger to the axiom ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’,” Abbey said. “I suspect that Israeli leaders are smart enough to understand the iron fist inside the Chinese-made velvet glove of investment, cultural exchanges and joint ventures,” he said. “Yet even a love tap from such a hard hand can be dangerous to one’s health.”

China, too, has been characteristically cautious about trumpeting its potential investments in Lebanon and Syria. “We’ve seen that it’s usually others who talk up the China option,” said Guy Burton, author of China and Middle East Conflicts.

Assad had called China a “friend” and encouraged it to become a more active reconstruction partner, he said, “yet the Chinese have not said anything specific on the matter, just warm words”.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah did the same in Lebanon and the recent talk about the China-Iran deal last month were “other examples of supposed pariahs pointing out that they have options that don’t rely on the West”, Burton said.

“But where are the Chinese in all this?” he asked. “You don’t hear them saying anything, which only adds to their allure while also increasing their stature.” ■

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Source URL: https://scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3098838/china-americas-hidden-target-trumps-historic-israel-uae-deal

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Source: https://www.scmp.com/print/week-asia/politics/article/3098838/china-americas-hidden-target-trumps-historic-israel-uae-deal

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