Russia’s recognition of the independence of the LPR and DPR caused some confusion in Tel Aviv, where at first nobody was in a hurry to make a statement. Moreover, after intense consultations in Israel’s Foreign Ministry and National Security Council, local officials were forbidden to provide comments by the ruling coalition, leaving the Jewish nation-state in a very uneasy situation. On the one hand, they did not want to spoil relations with Russia and harm the joint projects that had already been launched. On the other, they feared that silence over Donbass would provoke tensions in further communication with Western allies and, above all, with the US, for whom Ukraine has long been not just a bargaining chip but an instrument of confrontation with Russia, that would be used to stir Russophobic sentiments through the remotely-controlled Kiev authorities.

In this regard, at the February 27 politico-military cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett asked ministers not to speak publicly about Ukraine, stressing that: “Israel is not a party to this conflict, please remain silent.”

The Israeli position on the escalating tensions between Moscow and Kiev became a little clearer after the start of the Russian Defense Ministry’s special operation to denazify and demilitarize Ukraine, as Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid condemned the attack in a statement, saying that war is not the way to solve conflicts.

In doing so, the current authorities have neglected the fact that for the past eight years Moscow has been urging the international community to use diplomacy for ending the active nazification of Ukraine. It has been taking place all these years at the intense instigation of the US and Western countries, resulting in the deaths of thousands of Donbass civilians at the hands of Right Sector (banned in Russia) Nazis and Bandera militants.

However, Tel Aviv’s stance further underlines the fact that there’s a double standard in its approach, as Israel itself and its leaders have repeatedly expressed their intentions to use armed countermeasures against Iran and have carried out numerous terrorist attacks against Iranian military and political representatives. Moreover, neither Washington, nor its Western allies, nor the UN and the world community in general, have ever officially censured Tel Aviv for these provocative and subversive actions against Iran. As for overt military operations against Iran, Tel Aviv has avoided them only because it fears the devastating consequences of retaliatory military response that Tehran is capable of mounting. Nevertheless, the bogeyman of the Iranian nuclear threat is still actively used by Tel Aviv today, gathering a “pool of supporters” in armed opposition to Iran, in particular through the Washington-initiated “Abraham Accords” – i.e. strengthening Israel’s multidimensional cooperation with several Arab states.

In late February, the Israeli Foreign Ministry rejected a request from the US State Department and did not co-sponsor a resolution condemning the Russian invasion in mild terms, which was put to a UN Security Council vote. However, Washington has since initiated a series of “clarification talks” with the Israeli political establishment on how to behave in today’s situation. Also the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who has thrown away his former German identity to become a fierce supporter of White House politics for his own political ambitions, was asked to make a “surprise visit” to Israel to persuade Tel Aviv to vote in favor of a UN resolution condemning the Russian operation in Ukraine.

As a result, on instructions from Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid at the UN General Assembly, Israel decided to support a resolution condemning Russia. However the Tel Aviv statement was not voiced by Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan, as his deputy Noah Furman took this task in order to reduce “the irritation factor for Russia.” Thus Israel, which had previously tried to deal with the consequences of the actions of fascists and manifestations of neo-Nazism, has now officially stood up for the neo-Nazi authorities in Kiev, officially glorifying such fascist thugs as Bandera and Shukhevich.

And here the current Israeli authorities have blatantly ignored the attitudes of their own population to the rise of Nazism and anti-Semitism in Ukraine in recent years. Moreover, Moscow’s current special operation is precisely aimed at countering this, while this criminal policy of Kiev has been encouraged by the West for eight years now!

In this regard, it would be appropriate to recall at least the recent events of the annual Hasidic pilgrimage to a small Ukrainian town, Uman, Cherkasy region, whose locals, in a fit of neo-Nazi indoctrination by the Ukrainian authorities, opposed the arrival of believers from the Promised Land. Religious Israelis then voiced their harsh accusations to president Vladimir Zelenski. Hasidism is a powerful current in Judaism, according to which everyone can achieve personal holiness. For one of its branches, the Breslov Hasidim, the holy place is Uman in Ukraine, where the founder of their movement, Rabbi Nachmani, is buried, and a pilgrimage to his tomb at least once in a lifetime is considered a God-given deed. However, amid an upsurge of Judeophobia in Ukraine, a rabbi was beaten in the summer of 2020 in the same town of Uman; the police have not found the perpetrators.

Furthermore, it is unlikely that the people of Israel can indifferently watch as monuments are erected in Ukraine to those who exterminated Jews by the tens of thousands, burned, stabbed, shot, and buried them alive in mass graves. The names of these executioners, whose hands are up to their elbows in Jewish blood, are used to name streets and schools in the cities. Due to the policies pursued by the Kiev authorities, these murderers are now heroes for Ukraine. And the fact that the current president of Ukraine is an ethnic Jew means absolutely nothing. After all, this man betrayed not only his own blood but also his own kinship, effectively spitting on the grave of his grandfather who fought against Nazism.

It would seem that Israel should be sounding the alarm, calling on the entire civilized world to pay attention to the crimes that are taking place in Ukraine with the connivance of the Kiev authorities and their US sponsors. And heirs of the executioners are now literally dancing on the graves of murdered Jews there, encouraging anti-Semitism: regular desecration of Jewish graves, monuments, and domestic anti-Semitism. This, in particular, is confirmed by Eduard Dolinsky, Director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, who, on his Facebook page, clearly demonstrates that modern Ukraine is a completely anti-Semitic country, where the memory of murderers of the Jewish people is honored and protected and monuments are erected to them, often even on the site of the mass graves of the Jews they murdered.

But current Israeli officials do not hear Eduard Dolinsky and do not want to know the true situation in Ukraine. They prefer to listen to Washington’s fakes and betray the memory of the Jewish people who suffered under fascism, and to stand up for the Nazi authorities in Kiev at the behest of the White House.

Not long ago, former US President Donald Trump said: “America will not be held hostage by nuclear blackmail.” The same position was previously held by Tel Aviv. However, having taken the path of criticizing Russia over its fears of Ukraine getting nuclear weapons, Israel itself will now no longer have the right to resent the possibility of Iran arming itself with a nuclear bomb, since it chose to suit the political whims of the current rulers in Washington!

As for further engagement with Moscow, Israel has needed it more than Russia in recent years, especially in developments in neighboring Syria. However, with Tel Aviv adjusting its attitude to Russia’s objective fears due to NATO’s provocative eastward expansion and the growing neo-Nazi and nuclear threat from Ukraine, Israel can now hardly expect Moscow to understand its concerns about extremist manifestations from Syria and the previous reaction to the Israeli army’s missile and air strikes on Syrian territory.

Vladimir Odintsov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The human rights organization, Amnesty International, published a report detailing the “true extent of Israel’s apartheid regime” and strongly called for an arms embargo on Israel and for Israel “to recognize the right of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to homes where they or their families once lived.”  In this landmark report, the influential organization said, “the Israeli authorities must be held accountable for committing the crime of apartheid against the Palestinians.” A multi-year investigation details how Israel applies a system of oppression and domination against the Palestinian people. This includes Palestinians living in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), as well as displaced refugees in other countries.

The 280-page report, “Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime against Humanity,” outlines how mass seizures of Palestinian land and property, illegal killings, forced displacement, severe restrictions on movement and denial of citizenship to Palestinians are “all components of a system which amounts to apartheid under international law.” This system is supported by violations that, according to the organization, “constitute apartheid as a crime against humanity, as defined in the Rome Statute and Apartheid Convention.” The Human Rights Organization is “calling on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to consider the crime of apartheid in its current investigation in the OPT and calls on all states to exercise universal jurisdiction to bring perpetrators of apartheid crimes to justice.”  Amnesty International’s findings are based on a huge body of work by Palestinian, Israeli and international NGOs, which are increasingly applying the definition of apartheid to the situation in Israel and/or the OPT.

The term “apartheid” was originally used to refer to a political system in South Africa that explicitly encouraged racial segregation, as well as the domination and oppression of one racial group by another. Since then, the international community has decided to condemn and criminalize any such system or practice, wherever they occur in the world. The report documents how the Israeli authorities take numerous measures to deliberately deny Palestinians their basic rights and freedoms, as well as commit forced displacement, administrative detention, torture and unlawful killings, both in Israel and in the OPT. It refers to the illegal killing of Palestinian protesters to illustrate how the Israeli authorities use prohibited actions to maintain the status quo.  In 2018, Palestinians in Gaza began holding weekly protests along the border with Israel, calling for the right of refugees to return and an end to the 15-year blockade of the enclave. Even before the protests began, senior Israeli officials warned that Palestinians approaching the wall would be shot. By the end of 2019, according to Amnesty International, Israeli forces had killed 214 civilians, including 46 children.

In light of the systematic illegal killings of Palestinians documented in the report, Amnesty International called on the UN Security Council to “impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel,” as well as “targeted sanctions, such as asset freezes, against Israeli officials most implicated in the crime of apartheid.”  The report highlights how successive Israeli Governments have viewed the Palestinians as a demographic threat, introducing measures to control and reduce their presence and access to land in Israel and the OPT. These demographic goals are well illustrated by official plans to “Judaize” areas of Israel and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which continue to put thousands of Palestinians at risk of forcible transfer.

In addition to the division of Palestinian communities and their separation from Jewish Israelis, the report states numerous facts that the Israeli authorities treat the Palestinians as an inferior racial group determined by their non-Jewish, Arab status. For example, Palestinian citizens of Israel are denied citizenship, thus establishing a legal differentiation from Jewish Israelis. In the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, where Israel has controlled the population register since 1967, Palestinians have no citizenship, and most of them are considered stateless requiring an identity card from the Israeli military just to live and get a low-skilled job.  Palestinian refugees and their descendants who were displaced during the 1947-1949 and 1967 wars continue to be denied the right to return to their former places of residence. Although the report does not contain any position on the right of the Palestinians to return six million refugees, its wording supports this in clear terms. Israel’s exclusion of refugees is “a flagrant violation of international law which has left millions in a perpetual limbo of forced displacement,” the report says.

Amnesty International’s documentation of the dispossession of Palestinians is consistent with numerous Palestinian accounts. The report states that in 1948, Palestinians made up about 70% of the population of Palestine (at that time the territory under the British mandate) and owned about 90% of private land. Jews, many of whom emigrated from Europe, made up about 30% of the population, and they, as well as Jewish institutions, owned about 6.5% of the land. According to the report, “The Israeli authorities have taken measures to turn this situation upside down.”

Today, Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up about 19% of the population, face many forms of “institutionalized discrimination.” In 2018, discrimination against Palestinians was put into a constitutional law that for the first time enshrined Israel exclusively as the “nation state of the Jewish people.” The law also promotes the construction of Jewish settlements and reduces the status of Arabic as an official language. The report documents how Palestinians are effectively blocked from leasing 80% of Israel’s (formerly Palestinian) public lands as a result of “racist land seizures and a web of discriminatory laws on land allocation, planning and zoning.”

Since 1948, the Israeli authorities have been pursuing various policies to Judaize the Negev/Naqab area in southern Israel, including allocating large territories as nature reserves or military training areas and setting goals to increase the Jewish population. This has had devastating consequences for tens of thousands of Palestinian Bedouins living in the region. Thirty-five Bedouin villages, home to about 68,000 people, are currently “unrecognized” by Israel, which means that they are cut off from the national electricity and water supply, and targeted for repeated demolitions. Since villages have no official status, their residents also face restrictions on political participation and are excluded from the healthcare and education systems. These conditions have forced many to leave their homes and villages, “in what amounts to forcible transfer,” the report says.

Decades of deliberately unequal treatment of Palestinian citizens of Israel have left them at a permanent economic disadvantage compared to Israeli Jews. This is compounded by the discriminatory allocation of public resources. A recent example is the Government’s COVID-19 package, of which only 1.7% was provided to Palestinian local authorities.

Since its creation, the Israeli State has carried out massive and brutal land grabs against Palestinians and continues to implement many laws and strategies aimed at driving Palestinians into small enclaves. Since 1948, Israel has destroyed hundreds of thousands of Palestinian homes and other property in all areas under its jurisdiction and effective control. “The dispossession and displacement of Palestinians from their homes is a crucial pillar of Israel’s apartheid system,” Amnesty International said in the report.

As in Negev/Naqab, the Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the OPT area live under full Israeli control. The authorities are denying Palestinians permission to build in these areas, forcing them to build illegal structures that are being demolished again and again.  In the OPT, the continued expansion of illegal Israeli settlements has been a state policy since 1967. Today, settlements occupy 10% of the land in the West bank, and 38% of the Palestinian land in East Jerusalem was expropriated between 1967 and 2017.  Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem are often targeted by settler organizations that, with the full support of the Israeli Government, are working to relocate Palestinian families and transfer their homes to settlers.

Since the mid-1990s, the Israeli authorities have imposed increasingly stringent restrictions on the movement of Palestinians in the OPT. The 700-kilometer fence, which Israel is still expanding, isolates Palestinian communities inside “military zones,” and they must obtain several special permits whenever they enter or leave their homes. “The permit system in the OPT is emblematic of Israel’s brazen discrimination against Palestinians,” the report says. “While Palestinians are locked in a blockade, stuck for hours at checkpoints, or waiting for yet another permit to come through, Israeli citizens and settlers can move around as they please.”

Amnesty International said it has examined each of the security justifications that Israel cites as the basis for its treatment of the Palestinians. The report shows that “while some of Israel’s policies may have been designed to fulfil legitimate security objectives, they have been implemented in a grossly disproportionate and discriminatory way which fails to comply with international law.”  “Other policies have absolutely no reasonable basis in security, and are clearly shaped by the intent to oppress and dominate.”

Viktor Mikhin, corresponding member of RANS, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

After Israel signed the Abraham Accords in 2020 to normalize relations with the UAE and Bahrain, and then with Morocco, whether Saudi Arabia will be next in line in this process is being actively discussed in the United States, Israel, and the Middle East in general. The intensity of such discussions increased as the Saudi Kingdom began to introduce adjustments to foreign policy, such as stable diplomacy with Iran, making it impossible to interact with Israel, such as the situation with the UAE.

Looking back, Saudi-Israeli relations were mainly due to the close personal relationship between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of the former US President Donald Trump. Kushner frequently bypassed key US State and Department of Defense officials to push bin Salman into a sharp regional power game that the US foreign policy bureaucracy considered reckless but which was favored by Israel. In response, Kushner provided the Saudi Crown Prince with White House support, allowing bin Salman to play power games such as the blockade of Qatar, the kidnapping of the Lebanese Prime Minister and cleansing internal rivals.

It is no secret that the majority of Israelis continue to consider Saudi Arabia the most coveted prize in the process of normalizing the situation around Israel. Opinion polls have highlighted this in the months following the signing of the Abraham Accords. The Mitvim Institute’s Israeli Foreign Policy Index showed that Saudi Arabia is viewed by Israelis as by far the most important Arab country to develop cooperation with. In the Geneva Initiative poll, the Israelis again ranked Saudi Arabia well above other Arab countries on the most valuable target for Israel’s next peace deal list. Reports in November 2020 of a trilateral meeting between former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman and former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo greatly strengthened hopes in Israel that the desired rapprochement with Riyadh was only a matter of time.

But these hopes never came true. Even worse, this year, such a move by Saudi Arabia has become even more distant. The controversy over Israel among the Saudi royal family has intensified significantly against the backdrop of deteriorating attitudes towards bin Salman from the new White House Administration and its desire to keep the Saudi crown prince at arm’s length over his involvement in the assassination of opposition Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. In addition, Riyadh has opened channels of dialogue with Iran, reflecting a different approach from Israel’s.

Along with this, Saudi Arabia has made repeated statements linking rapprochement with Israel with progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Riyadh’s commitment to the Palestinian issue is not just words. It is reflected in the peace initiatives promoted by the Saudis over several decades, in the King Fahd of Saudi Arabia plan 40 years ago (1981) and the Arab Peace Initiative almost 20 years ago (2002). However, Riyadh has made some conciliatory gestures towards Israel over the past decade. Including, among other things, coordination with Israel on security issues in Iran, participation of former senior Saudi Arabian officials in strategic dialogues and conferences with Israeli counterparts, unofficial visits of delegations to Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and confidence-building measures by religious leaders (such as visits to synagogues abroad and Auschwitz, among other things). There was also permission to fly to and from Israel through the airspace of Saudi Arabia, and more recently, the first interstate sports competition in judo at the Olympic Games in Tokyo.

At the same time, Saudi Arabia emphasizes that good relations with Israel will take place only after the return of the Palestinians and Israelis to the negotiating table. This negotiation request was pointed out on October 15 by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Arab monarchy, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud. According to him, the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians is a strategic necessity for the region.

The readiness of Saudi Arabia to take a step towards normalization with Israel was confirmed the other day by Abdallah Al-Mouallimi, the Kingdom’s permanent representative to the UN, in an interview with the Arab News newspaper. However, he simultaneously made it clear that this would only happen if Israel began to comply with the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative requirements. He recalled that the Arab Peace Initiative envisages ending the occupation of all Palestinian lands seized by Israel in 1967, creating an independent State of Palestine with its capital in Jerusalem and respect for the Palestinian rights, primarily to return and to self-determination. According to Abdallah Al-Mouallimi’s opinion, if all the conditions of the global Arab community are met, Tel Aviv can count on a bonus, which it could not dream of even in its brightest fantasies: the entire Islamic world, all 57 countries of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, will follow the example of Saudi Arabia. He emphasized an axiom known to everyone in the world: the key to peace lies in a just solution to the Palestinian issue. “There is no other solution to the conflict, and there cannot be,” concluded Al-Mouallimi.

Despite the apparent benefit for Israel from the settlement of relations with Saudi Arabia, Tel Aviv has not yet made any reciprocal steps, being still psychologically unprepared to agree with the “Arab initiative.” Any concessions from Riyadh are also unlikely to be expected soon, as well as the signing of an agreement on normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. At least until the current Saudi king, who represents the camp of the old Arab elite, quite conservative towards Israel, is replaced. King Salman wants to remain in the history of the Arab street and the Arab world as a man who did not betray his solidarity with the Palestinian people, as one of the most outstanding leaders of the Arab Ummah.

Valery Kulikov, political expert, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

On December 10, at the annual Israeli-American Council (IAC) National Summit in Miami, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz met with senior US functionaries about a radical solution to Iran’s nuclear program. He warned his American counterpart Lloyd Austin, and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken that he had ordered the Israel Defense Forces or the Army of Defense for Israel to prepare for war with Iran, should negotiations between the USA and Iran fail to resume the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), the Iranian nuclear deal.

Israel sent Defense Minister Benny Gantz and a new Mossad chief David Barnea to the IAC conference to convince the Administration of President Joe Biden to seek an alternative to the Iranian atom problem. That being against the background of another round of talks in Vienna on restoring the nuclear deal that recently ended with no results. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett stressed the importance and seriousness of these consultations between Israel and the USA the previous day in Tel Aviv: “Our goal is to utilize the window of opportunity that has opened between the rounds to tell our friends in the US: This is precisely the time to use a different toolkit against Iran’s galloping forward in the enrichment sphere.” Bennett stressed that Israel is in an intensive dialogue with the USA, Great Britain, France, Russia, and other countries.

MOSSAD chief D. Barney shared new intelligence on Iran with US officials. However, the Israeli emissaries were disappointed that their additional intelligence did not impress the American side. Unlike Israel, which has expressed confidence that the Iranians are developing their nuclear program more covertly, the USA believes Iran has not begun developing a nuclear bomb since it suspended its military program in 2003.

However, the New York Times clarified that despite good relations between the USA and Israel, the Iranian issue had overshadowed the communication, which has become increasingly tense: Washington and Tel Aviv disagree on the methods needed to contain Iran and the urgency of using them. Washington realizes that supporting Israeli strikes against the Iranian nuclear infrastructure or a joint US-Israeli military operation carries significant risks for both the USA and Israel. After all, Iran has an impressive missile arsenal; its ballistic and cruise missiles range up to 2500 km, warheads of up to 1000 kg, and sufficient accuracy to inflict colossal damage on US military facilities in the Middle East as well as Israel within that radius. In addition, Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement has an arsenal of at least 100,000 unguided rockets and missiles. Pro-Iranian forces are in Iraq and Syria, so all US military bases in those countries could come under attack.

For all its fixation and determination to prevent Iran from possessing nuclear weapons at all costs, Israel acknowledges that today’s Iranian nuclear program is far more robust than the Iranian nuclear facilities previously destroyed by Tel Aviv. Iran’s nuclear infrastructure includes dozens of facilities equipped at great depths in mountainous areas, so there is no guarantee that a military strike on them will destroy the nuclear program. Most likely, on the contrary, after such a strike, nothing will be able to make Tehran give up creating nuclear weapons, and it will undoubtedly make every effort to do so. A relative guarantee for Israel in this situation could be provided, according to Israeli estimates, by the use of low-yield nuclear weapons, which, among other things, Donald Trump was willing to do during his presidency. And even on June 25, 2019, he threatened Iran with a nuclear strike on his Twitter. However, Joe Biden will not take such a step, continuing to use diplomatic or sanctions tools. Joe Biden is a more cautious politician and more pro-American than pro-Israel. Biden is also aware that a new post-Hiroshima and Nagasaki use of nuclear weapons by Washington or, with its consent, by Israel against Iran would significantly change the threshold for the benefit of nuclear weapons in the world and would undoubtedly bring international criticism against the USA.

Nevertheless, Benny Gantz and David Barnea in the USA actively sought to strengthen the sanctions regime against Iran and endorse a scenario involving the use of force. In particular, this was reported by Israeli media, naming peripheral targets among the possible attacks, including alleged Iranian positions in Yemen. Suppose the Biden administration fails to tighten its approach. In that case, Israel does not rule out that it will be ready to act against Iranian targets on its own, including the use of sabotage attacks already tested by the MOSSAD. That is particularly hinted at in a recent Jewish Chronicle article, which reveals details of the 11-month preparations and execution of the sabotage at the Natanz nuclear facility in April this year. According to the Jewish Chronicle, MOSSAD operations destroyed 90 centrifuges and froze the activity of a key Iranian nuclear facility for nine months.

Although the USA did not support Israel’s proposals for military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, the Israeli media nevertheless point out that US President Joe Biden allegedly did recently order a review of the Pentagon’s plan for military action against Iran in case diplomatic efforts failed. Meanwhile, Israeli observers conclude that the move is allegedly intended to signal to Tehran that Washington is running out of patience due to delays in the negotiations on the nuclear deal in Vienna. However, one cannot rule out that this “leak” allowed by the media is intended to appease the Israeli side, which believes that the Americans are doing little to stop the Iranians’ ambitions.

Vladimir Danilov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

During the period of the last Labor government in Australia, the general policy of that government, which was in power for six years from 2008 to 2014, was to abstain on votes in the United Nations critical of Israel. When the Liberal government has been in power, as it has continuously since 2014, the vote is almost invariably against any motion critical of the actions of the Israeli government.

The reasons for this voting pattern are never explained. The Australian mainstream media maintains almost complete silence on this voting pattern. There is no reason to believe that the government’s attitude, as represented in the voting pattern, is in fact supported by the population as a whole. One suspects that the reason for the print media silence on the topic is that the general population do not in fact support the actions of the Israeli government that are regularly condemned by the United Nations General Assembly.

One of those topics regularly condemned by the General Assembly is the continued occupation of the Golan Heights by Israel. In 1968 Syria and Israel fought a brief war, in the course of which Israel captured the Syrian territory of the Golan Heights.

It is a fundamental principle of international law that no country may retain the land of another country captured in the course of a war. Yet that is precisely what the Israeli government has done. It has not only retained the Syrian territory, it has consistently ignored successive United Nations resolutions that the land must be vacated and returned to its rightful owners, in this case the state of Syria.

It is not merely occupation of the seized land that Israel does. It has over the years consistently built thousands of homes that are occupied by Israeli settlers. That building of residences on the occupied land continues to the present day with the new Israeli government of Naftali Bennett recently announcing a further program of building domestic properties.

The principal reason for Israel ignoring the United Nations vote is that it has the support of the United States which consistently votes against all resolutions critical of Israeli conduct, including the continued illegal occupation of Syrian territory. It is one of the features of this voting that also Australia continuously votes in support of Israeli defiance. It is one of literally a handful of countries to do so

A year ago, on 2 December 2020, there were five resolutions before the United Nations General Assembly on the topic of Israel’s continued defiance of international law. One of those resolutions, A/75/L.34 called for the “peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine.” The vote was 145 in favour and seven against, although one must wonder at the mentality of those who would vote against such a harmlessly worded resolution. The seven “No” votes followed a very similar pattern. They were Australia, Canada, Israel, the Marshall Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru and the United States.

These seven countries are part of a tiny minority that regularly vote against United Nations General Assembly resolutions critical of Israel. Three of the seven are inconsequential islands and depend on either the United States or Australia for their continued existence. Of the remaining four, they are the United States, Israel, and Australia and Canada, the latter two who in the United Nations act as affectively colonies of the United States.

This tiny group regularly vote together on resolutions critical of Israel’s conduct. What is of special interest to the Australian reader however, is that this voting pattern is consistently ignored by the mainstream media. They are all uniformly silent about the vote of the country whose opinions they purportedly represent.

The conclusion one is drawn to about the silence is that the media are ashamed of Australia’s pattern of support for Israel. It is not as if Australia is not infrequently loud in support of international law, or perhaps more accurately the American inspired notion of the “rules based international order”. This convenient fiction hides a multitude of sins, regularly put out to justify the latest United States violation of actual international law.

Although the Labor Party had a slightly more honourable position when in power, by abstaining on these votes condemning Israel’s blatant ignoring of international law, it is still a long way short of actually condemning the conduct, which is what a “No” vote would symbolise. If Labor wins the next election, as expected, there is unlikely to be any change in this pattern.

That party’s foreign affairs spokesperson, Penny Wong, has been conspicuously silent on Labor’s attitude to the continued unlawful conduct of Israel. On 1st of December the United Nations General Assembly adopted a further resolution on the topic, in one of its strongest ever statements. It declared as “null and void” the continued imposition of Israeli jurisdiction over the occupied territory.

In the resolution, adopted last Wednesday, and entitled “The Syrian Golan,” the vote recorded 94 votes in favour and 8 against, with 69 abstentions. The membership of the eight voters against the resolution was slightly changed from a similarly tiny group of a year before. On this occasion the eight “No” votes came from Australia, Canada, Israel, the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The resolution reaffirmed that settlement construction and other Israeli activities constituted a change in the demographic structure of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. The resolution called on Israel to resume peace talks and withdraw from the occupied Syrian Golan Heights in accordance with the border lines that existed on 4 June 1967.

The Israeli decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the occupied Syrian Golan Heights was null and void, the resolution declared. Introducing the resolution, Egyptian representative Osama Mahmoud said that

“The international community must take a decisive position towards respect of international law and international resolutions, most important of which are the United Nations resolutions that reaffirm the inadmissibility of annexation of territories by force and the rejection of any unilateral measures or demographic changes in territories under occupation”, he said.

Speaking to the resolution, the Syrian representative Bassam Sabbagh noted that the General Assembly had called on Israel many times to end its occupation, and that Israel’s refusal to do so, protected by the United States and others to respect the Security Council resolution has led to an “unacceptable paralysis” of the United Nations.

The Israelis are undoubtedly emboldened in their illegal activities by the United States. In 2019, former United States president Donald Trump signed a decree recognising Israeli “sovereignty” over Golan. The decree was widely condemned and has not received any international support.

It is difficult to see a resolution of this issue. Israel is clearly determined to continue its illegal occupation of the Golan Heights. As long as it retains the support of the United States there is unlikely to be any change in that position. It represents a very sad day for international law.

James O’Neill, an Australian-based former Barrister at Law, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Despite repeated statements at the UN by official Syrian authorities, Israel continues regular airstrikes against Syrian civilian targets, including provocative airstrikes when its fighter jets start hiding behind civilian aircraft.

In early September alone, Israeli Air Force fighter jets fired 24 missiles at targets inside Syria. The Syrian Air Defense Force destroyed 21 missiles thanks to Russian-made Buk-M2E and Pantsir-S1 systems. Before that, the Syrian Air Defense Force repulsed another Israeli attack in the skies over Damascus.

On October 8, six Israeli Air Force F-16 aircraft attacked, using 12 guided missiles, the T-4 airfield in the Syrian province of Homs, north of Al-Tanf. They carried out the attack from the Lebanese airspace after having crossed of state borders of Syria. The Syrian Air Defense Force destroyed eight Israeli missiles using the Russian-made Pantsir surface-to-air missile launcher system. The Israeli attack injured six Syrian soldiers guarding the civilian facility and damaged Syrian Arab Armed Forces equipment.

On October 13, during the night hours, four Israeli Air Force F-16 aircraft re-entered Syrian airspace near the US-occupied Al-Tanf zone in Homs province and, hiding behind civilian aircraft, which flew at that moment, carried out an airstrike on a phosphate processing plant near Palmyra. The Syrian army command decided not to use anti-aircraft systems to repulse the attack. There were two civilian passenger jets on the Dubai-Beirut and Baghdad-Damascus routes within the anti-aircraft defense zone. One Syrian soldier was killed, and three others were wounded as a result of the Israeli airstrike. In addition, the airstrike damaged a relay tower and other ground facilities. As usual, Israel has not commented on the strike on Syria.

It is worth noting that this is not the first time that such an attack has been launched from within the United States-occupied area in Homs province, which clearly indicates that the Israeli Air Force and the United States military agreed to the aforementioned action.

Moreover, it is becoming evident that in recent years Israeli air attacks against Syrian targets “under the shield of” civilian aircraft have become a feature of the IDF military command. By doing so, Tel Aviv deliberately provokes the Syrian Armed Forces and actively attempts to expose foreign civilian aircraft to the Syrians with further aggravation of Damascus’ relations with Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iran, and other countries.

A similar episode in September 2018 resulted in the deaths of 15 Russian servicemen aboard the Ilyushin Il-20 of the Russian Air Force. At that time, four Israeli F-16 fighter jets struck Syrian targets in Latakia, notifying the Russian Defense Ministry about the military operation just a minute before it began. The IDF Representative provided inaccurate information about the attack area; the Ilyushin Il-20 could not be withdrawn to a safe location.

On February 6, 2020, four Israeli Air Force F-16 fighter jets carried out surprise strikes with eight air-to-ground missiles on the outskirts of Damascus without entering Syrian airspace in a similar provocative pattern. At the same time as the attack by Israeli fighters, an Airbus-320 passenger airliner flying from Tehran to Damascus with 172 passengers on board, was landing in Damascus International Airport, and it almost ended up in the zone of deadly anti-aircraft missile and artillery fire. Only thanks to the prompt action of air traffic controllers at Damascus airport and the efficient work of the automated air traffic control system did the passenger Airbus-320 manage to escape from the damage zone of the Syrian Air Defense and land at the nearest alternate airfield at the Hmeimim Air Base, operated by Russia.

On December 25, 2020, Israeli aviation once again launched a provocative airstrike from Lebanese airspace using six of its F-16 aircraft on targets near Damascus, “forgetting” to inform other airlines which were not carrying Israeli citizens at the time in advance of their airstrike. In particular, an Ethiopian Airlines civilian airliner flying to Beirut was not warned by Israel. It was only by sheer luck and thanks to the experience of Syrian Air Defense Force operators that it was possible to avoid human casualties and a potential international scandal had the Ethiopian Airlines plane with civilian passengers been shot down in Syrian airspace (which Israel had clearly hoped for).

As those events testify, such operations by Israeli “strategists” unfortunately could cost the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians from various countries flying across Syrian airspace. Israel is not responding to official statements from Damascus and Moscow to Tel Aviv and various international instances, as it continues its provocative armed airstrikes against Syrian facilities.

In these circumstances, it became known that in response to yet another provocative Israeli air raid, Damascus, Tehran, and a number of groups under its control, made a decision to prepare an adequate response to Tel Aviv, engaging the existing tactical missile systems. The allied operational command instructed specialists to work out a list of probable targets in Israel as soon as possible and propose them to implement the operation and “strike retaliation against Israel.”

Taking into account the visit of the Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to Moscow on October 22, of which the Israeli Ambassador to Russia Alexander Ben Zvi reported, the subject of provocative actions of the Israeli Air Force in Syria will be discussed during the meeting, making the Israeli politician feel uncomfortable and compelled to provide answers.

Valery Kulikov, political expert, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Even though the presidential candidate Joe Biden had vowed to “move quickly” to re-join the Iran nuclear deal, this has not happened. The Biden administration’s deliberate strategy to kill the previous deal by following the framework of talks it inherited from the Trump administration has contributed massively to the present deadlock, leading the US and Israel to devise a “Plan B” to force Iran into submission. While Iran has been insisting – and its demands are not illegitimate – that the US must lift its sanctions first to create the path for reviving the JCPOA, Washington’s (and Israel’s) insistence on including Iran’s ballistic missile programme into the deal has become an additional sources of tensions and the ensuing deadlock. Including a new agenda in the deal does not mean reviving the deal; in fact, it is actually involves a bid to push Tehran for an altogether new deal – a goal that the US and Israel have been pursuing ever since the Trump administration withdrew from the deal and Israel started sabotaging Iran’s legitimate nuclear production though cyber attacks and by murdering its top nuclear scientist.

With a simple revival of the deal is increasingly looking impossible, the talk of the town is the ‘military option’ if the ‘diplomatic option’ fails to produce the desired outcome, that is a one-dimensional result that favours the US and Israel only.

While it is already hard to argue against the fact that Israel, by engaging in active sabotage, has been using proper military options to coerce Iran into submission, there is still no gainsaying that US and Israel are actively contemplating the military option to actually upgrade the military resources they have used so far. In doing so, both the US and Israel will be relying on the precedent set by the Trump administration when it killed Iran’s top military official, General Suleimani, last year in a drone air-strike in Iraq.

While the Biden administration may not itself want to start a new fully fledged war against Iran when it has just ended the US’ “endless war” in Afghanistan, there is no gainsaying that the US defense establishment may provide all the support, both diplomatic and military, Israel needs to carry out a military strike on Iran’s nuclear production capabilities. At the same time, it remains that the US may not be a fully opposed to actually coordinating with Israel a military strike on Iran. During his latest meeting with Biden, the Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, was a happy man when he received Biden’s reassurance that “all options” were on the table, should the on-goings talks fail. Now that the prospects of JCPOA’s revival through the US participation look extremely bleak, other options, including a military/air strike, could become a possibility.

For Israel, resorting to military actions has an added political – electoral advantage. According to a recent survey conducted by Israel’s Democracy Institute, more than 50 per cent of Israeli Jewish population believes that Israel should have launched a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities in the very early phase of its development. Launching a military strike, therefore, does not have political consequence for Naftali who sits on a multi-party coalition government.

Accordingly, Israel is building the momentum for its “Plan B” at both regional and international levels. The Israeli activity to build this momentum flows from its previous attempts at derailing the whole process to revive the JCPOA. Last week, in a joint press conference with his US and Emirati counterparts, Israel’s foreign minister, Yari Lapid, said that they “reserve” the right to act in self-defence. In Israeli geo-strategic parlance, the ‘right to self-defence’ has always meant a pre-emptive military operation. Lapid himself operationalized the definition of the so-called ‘right to self defence’ when he said that “If a terror regime is going to acquire a nuclear weapon, we must act. We must make clear the civilized world won’t allow it.” Antony Blinken reciprocated, saying that “we are prepared to turn to other options if Iran doesn’t change course.”

In his meeting with Biden’s National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, Lapid shared, without himself publicly revealing, with him details of Israel’s “alternative plan” against Iran. But some of the details of this plan have already been revealed by Israel’s military chief, when he said that Israel and its intelligence community “is working against Iranian regional entrenchment throughout the Middle East.” “Operations to destroy Iranian capabilities will continue — in various arenas and at any time”, he added.

Echoing Israel’s discourse, US Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley said last week that

“We will be prepared to adjust to a different reality in which we have to deal with all options to address Iran’s nuclear program if it’s not prepared to come back into the constraints of 2016.”

While the US officials continue to project that Iran is refusing to return to JCPOA, the fact remains that the deadlock is not an outcome of Iran’s refusal to revive the JCPOA, but its insistence on reviving the same agreement that was agreed in 2015 and lifting all sanctions the US has imposed, or failed to lift right after the deal after the deal. In refusing to lift sanctions, the Biden administration is essentially following in the footsteps of the Obama administration, which, while it did make the deal, continued to delay the lifting of all financial sanctions and unfreezing of the Iranian assets as well.

Therefore, the roots of the “Plan B” are impossible to find in the Iranian intransigence. It must be found in the US withdrawal from the treaty and its illegitimate insistence on negotiating a new deal, a demand that the other signatories of the deal – especially, China and Russia – do not support. A military action against Iran will thus be an avid example of how both the US and Israel have been staging wars to consolidate their regional and international dominance, respectively.

Salman Rafi Sheikh, research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The state of Israel has long suffered a difficult relationship with its Arab neighbours and a look at its history provides a clue as to the reason why. The Balfour declaration of 1917 marks a significant turning point. The declaration favoured the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine. That declaration was made without reference to the wishes or views of the overwhelmingly Arab population of the region.

In 1945 the United States president Franklin Roosevelt assured the Arabs that the United States would not intervene in Middle East affairs without consulting both the Arabs and Jews in the region. The British, who held a colonial mandate for Palestine at the time, was opposed to the creation of both a Jewish state and an Arab state in the region. The British also opposed unlimited immigration of Jewish refugees in the region.

Such immigration had a powerful emotional content given that the Jewish population of Europe had suffered enormously under the Nazis who ruled Germany from 1932 to 1945. The Jewish population of Poland had suffered tremendous losses during the war and with the Communist takeover of Poland in 1945 there was broad sympathy for their cause.

The death of Roosevelt in 1945 led to a change in the American position. His successor, Harry Truman, was more sympathetic to the Jewish wish to establish a homeland in Palestine. Truman established a committee in 1946 charged with the responsibility of discerning the future of Palestine. On May 20 1946 Truman announced his approval of the admission of 100,000 displaced persons into Palestine, overwhelmingly Jewish. In October of that year Truman publicly declared his support for the creation of a Jewish state. In that decision he was heavily influenced by the powerful Jewish lobby and the power it held in both the House and the Senate.

The matter also came before the fledgeling United Nations which in 1947 recommended the partition of Palestine into both a Jewish and an Arab state. On 29 November 1947 the United Nations adopted resolution 181 (known as the Petition Resolution) aimed at dividing the British mandated property into a Jewish and an Arab state. The resolution was to come into effect in May 1948 when the British occupation of Palestine was scheduled to end. Jerusalem was intended to maintain a separate status under international administration controlled by the United Nations.

On 14 May 1948 David Ben Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel. On the same day Truman decided to recognise the State of Israel, contrary to what had been Roosevelt’s plan. It marked the beginning of what may fairly be described as a special relationship between the United States and Israel that persists to the present day. Israel receives the unwavering support of the United States in the United Nations Security Council, that is protecting it from what would otherwise be the natural consequences of its behaviour.

That behaviour includes a record of unmatched aggression against its neighbours. The following is a summary of that behaviour which began in 1948 with the establishment of the State of Israel and continues to the present day with Israeli attacks upon the State of Syria despite there being no declaration of war.

Israel’s Wars

• 1948 Arab-Israeli war November 1947 to July 1948.
• Palestinian insurgency 1950s and 1960s.
• October 1956 The Suez Crisis when Britain, France and Israel attacked Egypt following Egypt’s decision of 20 July 1956 to nationalize the Suez Canal. The USA and USSR forced Israel to retreat.
• July 1967 The Six Day War. This was between Israel and Egypt, Jordan and Syria. The result was a significant expansion of Israel’s territory (the West Bank including East Jerusalem from Jordan, the Golan Heights from Syria, Sinai and Gaza from Egypt.
• The War of Attrition 1967-1970 between Israel and Egypt.
• October 1973 The Yom Kippur War. Israel won, but there were no significant territorial changes.
• 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon to expel the PLO from the territory. The PLO were expelled from Lebanon and the latter established an Israeli security zone in southern Lebanon.
• 1987-1993 The First Intafada with a Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
• 2000-2005 The Second Intafada.
• 2006 The Lebanon War. The result was a stalemate.
• December 2008-January 2009 Operation Cast Lead. Israel withdrew from Gaza.
• November 2012 Israel attacked Gaza.
• July-August 2014 Another Israeli military offensive against Gaza.
• 2021 Ongoing conflict between Hamas and Israel.

Of these multiple confrontations with its neighbours, perhaps the one of most significance is the conflict with Syria. During the 1968 war Israel seized the Syrian territory of the Golan Heights. It is a fundamental principle of international law the land captured in a battle may not be retained by the occupying power once the conflict is ended.

Israel has been in violation of that principle and thanks primarily to United States support in the United Nations does not feel under any pressure to vacate that territory. The Trump administration came very close to recognising the permanency of Israel’s illegal occupation of the Golan Heights. His successor, Joe Biden, shows absolutely no preference for pressuring Israel to vacate the stolen land it has now occupied for 53 years.

The other violations of Syrian sovereignty are the bombing of targets in Syria by the Israeli Air Force. Again, this is a fundamental breach of international law. One of the most interesting developments has been evidence that Russian tolerance of that bombing has reached the point where it is no longer prepared to look the other way.

The Syrian defence system has been very successful in intercepting the rockets fired by Israeli planes, commonly from over Lebanese territory. That air defence system has been supplied by the Russians. Russia has recently made it clear to the Israelis that this bombing is unacceptable from multiple points of view, not least their blatant disregard for international law.

It will be interesting to see whether the Russians take their displeasure at this blatant aggression by the Israelis a step further and mount some form of retaliation. That will create a very interesting situation in the region. The hope is that the Russian warning will be sufficient to deter the Israelis from extending their campaign.

There remain a number of unsettled issues in the region, and the return to Syria of its Golan Heights territory is high on the agenda. The apparent withdrawing of Russian tolerance for Israel’s behaviour may be the catalyst of some long overdue changes in the region.

James O’Neill, an Australian-based former Barrister at Law, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

There have been increasingly problematic reports about Israel’s preparations to launch a military strike against Iran in recent days. It is well known that Israel considers Iran’s nuclear program to be the “number one” issue. Despite Iran’s repeated claims that developing a nuclear bomb is not part of its plans, tensions between the countries continue to escalate.

In a press briefing on August 25, Lieutenant General Aviv Kochavi, the Commander-in-Chief of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), publicly stated that the Israeli command is accelerating plans for a possible strike against Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons. The Israeli military chief convened the briefing on the eve of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s meetings with US officials (Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and President Joe Biden) as part of his first official visit to Washington as head of the Jewish state’s government.

The new Israeli prime minister has repeatedly stated that he is opposed to renewing the nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 group. In his Cabinet, Naftali Bennett stressed that he considered the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) obsolete and no longer “relevant to those who once thought it was relevant.” Before his trip to the US, Bennett said he intended to provide Biden with a new strategy for countering Iran, which would include  strengthening relations with some Arab countries and continuing sabotage of Iranian nuclear facilities. “What we need to do, and what we are doing, is forming a regional coalition of reasonable Arab countries, together with us, that will fend off and block this expansion and this desire for domination,” he told The New York Times

Senior defense ministry officials said Israel “cannot rule out” any action against the nuclear program, reported Israel Hayom. In particular, Defense Minister Benny Gantz indicated that Israel “has the means to act and will not hesitate to act” to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear state. Gantz stressed that he believes the credible threat of an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities is the only way US President Joe Biden’s administration can negotiate a better nuclear deal with Tehran. “Israel has the means to act and will not hesitate to do so – I do not rule out the possibility that Israel will have to take action in the future to prevent a nuclear Iran,”  the minister said.

The IDF is speeding up operational plans against Iran because of the progress of the country’s nuclear program, Lieutenant General Aviv Kochavi, the Commander-in-Chief of the Israel Defense Forces, told The Jerusalem Post. “Progress on Iran’s nuclear program has forced the IDF to accelerate its operational plans, and the recently approved defense budget is designed to do just that,” he said. According to Israeli media reports, the IDF’s defense budget of 58 billion shekels set for the coming year will allow the Israeli military to focus on threats from Iran across the region. Directly allocated NIS 3.5 billion to counter Iran.

In this regard, Aviv Kochavi commented on Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s arrival in the United States, indicating that Bennett will push Biden to tighten his approach to Iran. In the absence of diplomatic options that could push Tehran to end its nuclear program, the Israeli military considers the possibility of harsher sanctions against Iran. Military operations against Iran’s nuclear program are also possible.

As recently as January 14, the Israel Hayom newspaper reported that the Israel Defense Forces were developing plans to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Citing its military sources, the publication claimed that Aviv Kohavi, then head of the Israeli General Staff, had requested three alternative proposals to disrupt Tehran’s nuclear program. Without going into detail about the substance of these proposals, Israel Hayom indicated that a military operation against the Islamic Republic was being considered as one option.

Under the circumstances, The New York Times, citing senior Israeli officials, reports that the visit of the new Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to Washington has as its primary goal to secure the White House’s consent to continue covert operations against Iran’s nuclear program. According to the newspaper, Israel fears that US President Joe Biden’s intention to return Washington to the Nuclear Deal with Tehran could sabotage Iranian nuclear facilities or assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists.

However, the United States is committed to dismantling the Iranian nuclear program officially and has stated a desire to do so diplomatically. “We are very clear that it remains in our national interest to seek a mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA,” Ned Price, the Spokesperson for the United States Department of State,  reported. As for Israel’s current mood to move the resolution of Iran’s nuclear program to an active dimension,  including military, the Biden administration has so far openly opposed it. And this was confirmed by a recent publication by The New York Times, which emphasized that Israel “upset the US with a formal signal before attacking Iran’s nuclear facility.” As the Israeli newspaper Haaretz commented on this article on August 26, Israel warned the United States less than two hours before its plans to attack Iran’s Natanz nuclear site in April of this year. This reflected the policy of then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to keep Joe Biden’s administration in the dark about Israel’s actions in Iran. Such short notice to Netanyahu before the Natanz operation deprived US intelligence agencies of sufficient time to respond. Nevertheless, a few days after the attack, Washington said it was not involved in the operation. After the Natanz attack, CIA Director William Burns called Yossi Cohen, former Mossad Chief, to express concern about the “disregard for the established practice of prior consultation.”

Vladimir Danilov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

On July 29, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO, a unit of the British Navy), there was an attack in the Arabian Sea on the oil tanker Mercer Street, associated with Israeli billionaire Eyal Ofer, killing two crew members, one British and one Romanian. The incident occurred northeast of Masirah Island of Oman about 300 kilometers southeast of the Sultanate’s capital Muscat. Several drones carried out the attack.

The news website Al-Alam quoted unofficial sources as saying that the attack on the Mercer Street oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman, in which two crew members were killed, could be revenge for the deaths of two “resistance fighters” in the Israeli Air Force attack on Syria’s Al-Dabaa military airport and Al-Qusayr district in western part of Homs Governorate on the night of July 22.

According to a July 31 statement by Jalina Porter, Principal Deputy Spokesperson at the US Department of State, the United States cannot confirm Iran’s involvement in the attack on the Israeli tanker in the northern Indian Ocean. Nevertheless, the British media connect this incident with the increased tensions in the region between Iran and Israel, which, in particular, had already previously been marked by a series of attacks on merchant ships of the two countries.

It is worth noting that on April 6, the Iranian ship Saviz was attacked with mines off the coast of Djibouti in the Red Sea. The ship sustained minor damage, and no crew members were injured. The Times of Israel admitted Israel’s involvement in the attack on the Iranian ship. On April 25, Major General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, Iran’s Chief of Staff, threatened to retaliate against Israel, following an Iranian oil tanker was attacked off the coast of Syria,killing three people on the merchant ship: a tanker carrying oil to Syria was attacked near Port of Banias. It was attacked by a drone launched from Lebanese territorial waters.

In March, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) presented its analysis of conflicts with Iranian and Israeli maritime vessels over the recent period. Thus, the publication claimed that Israel has been carrying out covert strikes against Iranian ships and other ships carrying the Islamic Republic’s cargo since 2019. Examples were given of Israeli attacks using mines and other weapons on at least 12 Iranian ships bound for Syria, most of which carried Iranian oil. It was also pointed out that some of the alleged Israeli strikes in the Red Sea and other Middle Eastern waters were aimed at allegedly Iranian-linked arms shipments. The ships were not sunk due to the attacks, but at least two ships had to return urgently to Iran.

In February and March, there were reports of Iranian attacks on Israeli merchant ships in the Arabian Sea, confirming an escalating confrontation between Iran and Israel. Thus, according to Israeli media reports, on February 26 in the Gulf of Oman, there was an explosion on the container ship MV Helios Ray, sailing under the Bahamian flag but belonging to Israel. The military-political leadership of the Jewish state immediately accused Iran of attacking the ship. Tehran, in turn, categorically denied the accusations.

On March 25, the Liberian-flagged Israeli container ship Lori was hit by a missile in the Arabian Sea but continued its journey from Tanzania to India because the damage was minor. No one on board the ship was injured. The ship is owned by XT Management, based in the Israeli Port of Haifa.

On April 13, an Israeli-owned ship called the Hyperion Ray, sailing under the Bahamian flag but owned by an Israeli company that supplies cars, was attacked off the coast of the Emirate of Fujairah. There was no information about casualties on board or the extent of damage caused to the ship. The incident took place on the second day after Iran blamed Israel for the April 11 explosion at one of the key nuclear facilities of the Islamic Republic – Natanz centrifuge facility (Isfahan province).

These incidents at sea clearly demonstrate the ongoing conflict in the so-called “shadow zone” between Israel and Iran. According to several experts, such operations are coercive and, at the same time, ambiguous. The “authorship” is difficult to determine with a high degree of accuracy. They are undertaken by actors attempting to revise the regional order while remaining below the threshold to justify a military response from the other side. Experts believe that operations in the “shadow zone” are becoming a central component of the strategy of both Israel and Iran.

They have recently become active against the backdrop of covert operations of the long-standing confrontation between the intelligence services of Israel and Iran and is no small matter of war. After all, the undeclared military operations of the Israeli secret services against Iranian nuclear facilities, nuclear scientists, politicians, and Iranian military leaders with numerous sabotage, subversions, and murders, became undeclared military operations of recent years. Just look at the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, Iranian major general and a commander of the Quds Force or Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a leading Iranian nuclear physicist, by the Israeli intelligence services in January 2020!

All such actions by the Israeli secret services, of course, could not remain unpunished, as the official authorities of the Islamic Republic have repeatedly warned Israel. However, Tehran wisely did not carry out the earlier threat of a missile strike against Israel, but showed its commitment to their policy of “an eye for an eye” with little bloodshed. In this way, Tehran is forced to accept the rules of the game imposed on it by Israel, thanks to whose efforts terrorism and assassinations of political and important public figures are unfortunately becoming the norm in relations with Iran.

Valery Kulikov, political expert, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.