Arab countries have inched closer toward restoring ties with Syria in recent years, most notably the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. In October 2021, Jordan's King Abdullah II received a call from President Assad, the first between the two leaders in a decade.
"Syria's absence from the Arab League harms cooperation between Arab countries," said Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra, speaking at a news conference with his Syrian counterpart, Faisal Mekdad, and having met with President Assad while delivering a letter from Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboun.
Israeli elections and far-right move
While the Arabs were meeting in Algeria, Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu, on trial on corruption charges, was engineering his return to power in Israel through an unusual alliance with an ultra-nationalist party.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the leader of Israel's Jewish Power faction, lives in the illegal settlement of Kiryat Arba in the Palestinian city of Hebron. The far-right extremist leader appears likely to take a senior role in government after the Religious Zionism bloc he co-heads, with Bezalel Smotrich, became the third-largest in parliament with 14 seats, the largest gain of any religious party in Israel.
Ben-Gvir has demanded to be appointed as a public security minister in the new Netanyahu government. That position is problematic because of the history of Ben-Gvir, who has been convicted in 2007 of racist incitement and support of a terrorist group on both the US and Israeli terror blacklists. In the past year, he led a settler storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and has previously acted as a legal defense for Lehava, a racist group, which has called for the full expulsion of Palestinians, and a ban on Christmas. It views Christian churches as places of idol worship. The Israeli government has long had the plan to convert churches and Bethlehem into tourist attractions devoid of any connection to practicing Christianity.
Besides deporting all Palestinians, Ben-Gvir also plans to expel Palestinians who are Israeli citizens and have been democratically elected to the Knesset, along with leftist Israeli Jews who are MPs.
"When we form the government, I will promote the Deportation Law, which will deport anyone who acts against the State of Israel or IDF soldiers," Ben-Gvir said in an interview last August.
Ben-Gvir pulled his gun and admonished police officers responding to an altercation with Palestinians, "If they are throwing stones, shoot them."
The path forward for Netanhayu's government may depend on the upcoming November 8 elections in the US, where Republicans may make gains, which may be a green light for Netanyahu and extremism.
The settlements
The 1949 Geneva Convention, which Israel signed, it is prohibited for an occupying power to move its own population into the territory. Since the occupation of the West Bank in 1967, numerous UN resolutions affirm that Israel's occupation is illegal, and the settlements on the West Bank have no legal basis.
Despite the international consensus, Israel continues to build illegal settlements on the West Bank, which currently number over 100, with 450,000 Israeli settlers living there, and another 220,00 Jewish settlers living in East Jerusalem.
Israel is an apartheid state
On March 25, 2022, Michael Link, UN Special Rapporteur, concluded that Israel met the conditions of an apartheid state. His findings reported that an institutionalized regime of systematic racial oppression and discrimination has been established, a system of alien rule had been established with the intent to maintain the domination of one racial-national-ethnic group over another, and the imposition of this system of institutionalized discrimination with the intent of permanent domination had been built upon the regular practice of inhumane acts.
The question for liberal western democracies is, "Can democracy, religious extremism, and apartheid policies co-exist?" A follow-up question is, "Can the west continue to support Israel?"
Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist
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